The ape suddenly turned blue again. The giant roared in laughter and leaned back to his compatriots. He cut straight over their own conversations. “The little maggot here thinks my moving tattoo’s a real ape!”
“That’s a good one, chief,” said the giant closest to him – a woman with blood-red hair. She slugged him on the shoulder, which made him laugh again, releasing flecks of spittle and more of his potent reek.
He turned back to Arash. “Well, seeing as it’s not fair to fight with stupid people, I won’t answer your nudge with a little nudge of my own. I’ll just take some of the loot you’re hauling,” he jutted his chin at her wagon, “and then we’ll be on our way!”
Arash tightened her grip on the wet handle. “You can’t have it.”
“Ooh, is there a speck of fire in you after all?” Now the niffle ape was laughing, too.
She kept her posture tall. “It’s public property. It’s not mine to give. You can’t have it. They’re all books anyway. Nothing especially valuable.”
“It’s the principle of the thing! I have ethics, and my ethics say that you owe me, so I’m taking something. Are you going to raise a puny fist against me? Let’s say this is a champion’s ring, then. It’s official. Stop me if you can, vermin.”
The giant reached right over her, pulled off the tarp, and snatched a book. Arash dove. She was too late to save the book, but she yanked the tarp back into place before the others were damaged by the rain.
“Here’s your little booky-book.” He dangled it above her head. “Did you want to try to take it back?”
If she lost that book, she’d have to pay for it. At least it was the one wrapped in oilcloth; the rain wouldn’t hurt it. Arash left her dignity behind and jumped.
Of course the giant pulled the book up and away from her, to the cackling laughter of those behind him.
“I’m afraid you’re just a hair too short. I think I’m winning this duel. Is there even anything good inside? Stories of great champions?”
He started undoing the oilcloth.
“You’ll ruin it! It’s raining, you idiot!” Arash shouted.
He snorted. “You’re an idiot. I at least know a tattoo when I see one.”
The goblin behind him coughed. “Chief Goldenbeard. She’s right, you know. Let’s take it back to camp and open it there. If there’s schematics for, say, siege equipment in there, it’d be a shame to get it soggy.”
“It’s my book, I’ll sog it if I want to.”
Arash jumped again, knowing she’d fall painfully short. “You need gloves to open it! It’s fragile! Or possibly dangerous!”
Goldenbeard tossed the oilcloth to the ground. Rain splattered onto the exposed cover. “Bah. It’s a book. It’d only be dangerous if I threw it at someone.”
He flipped open the pages, getting them wet, too.
“Stop! Please! That’s public property!” Where was a district watchman when she needed one? She should have paid for a blasted hovercab.
Arash jumped. And jumped again. In desperation, she did something she knew was foolish: she kicked the giant in the shins.
“Oh no, I’m trembling,” Goldenbeard said.
She aimed another kick. He side-stepped, then he cursed. “Ach. You made me give myself a papercut. Stop that, or I’ll boot you back.”
He popped the injured finger in his mouth.
And then he promptly collapsed onto the cobbles.
One of the humans – a man with a cybernetic leg covered in so many spikes it couldn’t be anything like practical – ran forward and checked his pulse. “Twitch, I think–”
“Already here,” responded the squat, humanoid robot. He laid a hand on Goldenbeard’s chest. Filaments streamed from his fingers, crisscrossing over the giant in a web of shifting white, blue and pink. Then Twitch slowly retracted the filaments. “Revival efforts have failed. He’s dead as a doornail, guys. Generating autopsy.”
For the first time, the Brobnar crowd fell silent. They all stared at Arash as the rain pattered down. She had no idea what to say. Apologize profusely? Deny any wrongdoing? Remain silent until she found a lawyer? “I, umm, did warn him the book could be dangerous,” she muttered.
And she couldn’t just leave it lying there on the sidewalk next to a dead giant. She found a stick on the side of the road and used it to flip the book closed.
The cover read: “The Hemlock Book of Hemlock Paper. The paper of this book is made with samples of hemlock from all over the Crucible, including the extremely lethal hemlock that grows on the slopes of Mount Strond. This makes it a treasury of natural history and my life’s work – and also very dangerous. Please proceed with caution, always wearing the thickest leather gloves available.”
Arash’s heart pounded, making her lightheaded. The cause of death… it couldn’t be the book. It couldn’t.
“Hemlock poisoning from the papercut,” Twitch announced. “Our chief was defeated by the small human woman’s weapon.”
Arash swallowed and grabbed the oilcloth, using that to snatch up the book. “I warned him. I told him. It wasn’t me. It’s not my weapon. It’s public property.”
Inside, she was thinking, Architects and Archons, I’ve killed a man.
“I can pretty solidly confirm that your book did him in,” Twitch asserted.
One of the giants at the back spoke up. “You were his second, Brunhilda.”
The woman with the crimson hair shook her head. “The chief called for a champion’s ring.”
“Oh, stuff it,” the same giant at the back said. “I didn’t hear him say any such thing.”
Twitch helpfully played back a sound recording in the voice of the dead giant: “Let’s say this is a champion’s ring, then. It’s official. Stop me if you can, vermin.”
Arash shuddered and stuffed The Hemlock Book of Hemlock Paper in the back of her wagon where it hopefully wouldn’t get anything else wet. Should she stay until a district watchman arrived? Call for help?
She’d come to return books. To get money. To buy more books. To make Marya more solid in this world. Return the books. That’s what she needed to do. Arash yanked on the handle, but of course the wagon was still stuck in the cobbles.
The spiky-legged man exhaled. “Well. I think that settles it.”
He unhooked Goldenbeard’s amulet. It was a massive thing, bigger than her fist, glowing orange-red from a chunk of æmber inside it. He strode right up to Arash and dumped the heavy thing around her neck.
It felt like he’d just marked her for death. Six giants, two humans, a goblin, and a robot. They could snap her neck faster than she could turn to run.
And she couldn’t run, anyway. She couldn’t abandon the books.
The giantess, Brunhilda, bowed to her. “Well, you’re tiny. And not very fierce. But we Brobnar have nothing if not our ethics.”
“Aye,” one of the others echoed. And then all of them – even the robot – bowed to her.
The blood drained from Arash’s face. “What… what are you going to do to me?”
“You defeated our chief in single combat in a champion’s ring,” Brunhilda said. “We’re going to follow you now, that’s what we’re going to do, isn’t it?”
The rest of the band let out a roar of approval that shook the sidewalk, knocked The Hemlock Book of Hemlock Paper back out of the wagon, and shattered the nearest glass window.
At least the roaring finally brought a district watchman. With Twitch’s recording of the whole event, Goldenbeard’s death was declared an accident of public drunkenness, and Arash was free to go.
Except, she was not exactly free. An entourage followed her. Brunhilda gustily sung some ballad about battles fought in champion’s rings, swinging her arms as she went, snapping a few branches off trees and startling more than one flock of feathered squirrels. Lamp posts bent as they passed, and cobbles cracked.
When the man with the spike-leg set off an alarm that sent a swarm of hornet-drones chasing them until they crossed in
to Hubcentral, Arash was done. She yanked the absurdly large pendant off. “Here. Take this back. And leave me alone.”
All of the Brobnar shuffled back a step. One of them bumped into the nearest steel and glass building – the norm for Hubcentral – and was repelled back onto the street by a force field of some kind, toppling over two of his fellows.
Arash silently sighed. She stepped toward Brunhilda. “You were second-in-command, right? It’s yours.”
“That’s not how it works, little one. We have our ethics, see. You have to wait at least a month.”
“And then you’ll take it?” Arash couldn’t imagine a month with these walking disasters following her around. She didn’t have time for this nonsense.
Brunhilda shook her head, long red hair swaying. “No. After a month, you can declare another champion’s ring and fight one of us. Wouldn’t be very sporting if you had to do two back-to-back, see?”
Arash stared up, rain streaming down her face. “I have to die to give up being your chief?”
“Well, no. champion’s rings aren’t always to the death. You might just get roughed up a bit. If you lose. Which you won’t. Because you’re the fiercest of the fierce! The bane of Goldenbeard!”
Arash rubbed her forehead. Even against the goblin, the smallest member of this group, she’d be lucky to leave a fight with all her limbs intact. She was a librarian, for goodness sake, and not one of those librarians that masqueraded at night as a vigilante of justice.
Brunhilda gave her a broad smile. Given the size of her face, all her smiles were probably broad. “You’re already a dire fighter. You’ll get used to the leadership part soon enough.” The giantess picked the wagon up under one arm and bowed. “I’ll take care of this. You just worry about leading the way, chief.”
Arash managed to convince most of the Brobnar to stay outside while she returned the books, but they insisted on sending at least Tek with her as an honor guard. The goblin was dressed just as flamboyantly as the others, with crimson nose rings and earrings, a mess of wire-wrapped hair, and clothing that seemed more studs than cloth. But at least he was smaller than the giants.
Behind the front desk stood Mr Dantant, the head librarian himself. Arash silently swore while she plastered a smile on her face. Mr Dantant had more metal on him than Tek – most of it cybernetic – but it was all of the blue, stainless steel variety that gleamed with condescension.
“I was just about to close. Do you have returns in that shabby cart of yours, or another greasy little goblin?”
It was hard to keep smiling at him. “If you’re about to close, we should get these checked back into the system right away, don’t you think?”
Mr Dantant snorted and used his telescoping arms to toss the tarp aside and gather up the books from where he stood. He stopped when he reached The Hemlock Book of Hemlock Paper.
“Ruined. Absolutely ruined.” His hand split into two halves up to the elbow. He used those, not his biological hand, to flip through the pages. “Rain damage. Fresh. This was your fault. Your negligence.”
“It’s only a little wet. Surely a short stay in the nanobot restoration chamber–”
Mr Dantant waved her words away with his free hand. “Nonsense. This isn’t ordinary paper. The nanobots aren’t programmed to repair something like this. You’ll have to be fined for its replacement.”
His pulled up a holographic data screen and scrolled through it with a lazy flick of his steely fingers. “Ah. This volume appears to be out of print now, and quite rare. Replacing it will cost three thousand æmbits.”
Three thousand? Arash gaped. For that much, she could buy a flying suit of armor. She didn’t have that kind of money. “Mr Dantant. That book was damaged not due to negligence but the unavoidable hazards of transportation. The city budget for the library ought to cover this.”
“Very well. If you cannot pay the fine, I will repossess books from your library to sell until the price is met. I will not have the grandeur of the Central Branch’s collection damaged by some satellite establishment in New Archton, of all places.”
What a pompous twit. Arash argued in circles with him for the next ten minutes solid with Tek standing next to her, arms crossed, trying to look menacing. An annoyed Mr Dantant eventually got a city official on the holoscreen to corroborate that as far as running the Interdistrict Hub City Library System went, they were happy to leave everything in Mr Dantant’s capable hands.
She trudged outside, pulling her decrepit cart behind her. It had stopped raining and was merely foggy now, making all the streetlights cutting through the evening darkness seem gray and cheerless.
“Your chief destroyed one of my books. I’m holding all of you responsible.” It was a brash thing to say. But what would be left of Marya if Mr Dantant emptied half of their library to pay for that stupid hemlock book? “You owe me three thousand æmbits.”
Spike-leg stepped forward. “See, well, we’re not his heirs, now, are we? You are. So you inherit his debts.”
Arash pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ward off a headache. “Fine. Where are his assets?”
“Well, he broke his double-barreled axe-bow during our last run. We take jobs guarding merchant caravans, you see? But we didn’t get paid much for our last gig – some damages we owed to repair one of the merchant’s antigrav carts, that’s a long story involving some golf balls, anyway – and then we came into town to drink away our sorrows at the loss of his axe–”
“He died broke? You’re telling me Goldenbeard died broke.”
“Aye! As mightily broke as anyone’s ever been!”
They all beamed at each other like it was some kind of feat to be out of æmbits.
It wasn’t, of course. It was all too easy to have nothing left.
“All of you. Leave.”
Brunhilda spoke this time. “You’re our chief. We can’t–”
“Well, your chief is telling you to go away!”
They all blinked at her, like they didn’t think she was capable of yelling. Arash stomped down the steps and stormed away down the sidewalk.
No footsteps immediately followed. But Brobnar never were the sneakiest of creatures. Every time she glanced behind her, she saw one of the giants standing behind a tree or lamppost, like those were actually good hiding spots. They chattered “softly” among themselves about who was to blame for the chief’s bad mood.
By the time Arash reached her own library, she was done with the lot of them. She took off her amulet and threw it down the stairs. “Whoever grabs that first can be the new chief. I’d better not see any of you tomorrow morning.”
Arash let herself in and closed the door hard behind her. She slumped against the wood, head pounding. Did she have anything left to sell? Her wedding ring had gone first. Then what was left of her husband’s laboratory equipment. The furniture. Her hyper-carbon dulcimer. She’d pawned about everything except some sensible clothes, Marya’s old toys, and one self-heating cast iron frying pan.
Pawning a few sentimental toys wouldn’t cover a three thousand æmbit fine. But it would let them keep a few more books in the library.
“Mama?” Marya peered at her, ghostly white, from the shiplap roof. She floated across it, to the wall joint, and down the door. Her face turned to oak, almost the color it had been in real life. She leaned out, barely an inch. Barely there. “Did you get paid? For returning the books? Can we get the flower dictionary?”
“Of course, my chickadee. Everything’s going to be fine. Let’s put you to bed.”
Arash had converted two of the offices into bedrooms after she sold the house and moved permanently into the library. Marya rippled up from the floor onto the coverlet, her face a cheery pink flannel. She didn’t make much of an impression right now. The blanket looked like it merely hadn’t been pulled straight, or had gone lumpy after too many washes.
Arash read her a story, sang her a song, and kissed her flannel cheek before heading into her own small, dark room. She c
rawled into bed, but she couldn’t fall asleep.
How many times had she told her husband that his efforts to travel through subspace to other worlds was dangerous? He told her he would stop, for real this time, after Arash’s favorite bookend got sucked into a void. But that had just been another lie. He’d moved his lab to the basement of the library.
Arash had been at the circulation desk when his experiment exploded straight through the roof. She’d seen him for just a moment, hovering in the air, half transparent as if he really were a ghost.
“Her body has blended into the library,” he’d said. “She needs books to enjoy, or she’ll fade into the walls entirely.”
And with that, he’d dissipated into nothingness.
Arash had thought those words were the last, mad rambling of a disintegrating mind, until she found Marya sobbing bits of sand from her brick eyes. Marya had figured out he’d moved the lab and had brought him down a cup of tea. She hadn’t meant to spill it into his interdimensional vortex. It was her fault, she’d said, that everything had gone wrong.
Arash hadn’t been able to hug her, even though back then Marya had been a good half foot out of the wall. Of course it wasn’t Marya’s fault. Her father wasn’t supposed to be doing those kinds of experiments in the first place.
It was Arash’s fault for being fool enough to think he’d actually stop.
She needs books to enjoy, or she’ll fade into the walls entirely. It was the first thing Arash thought every morning, before her eyes even opened. Immediately afterwards, she thought A Sanctum city has fallen from the sky. But then she woke up all the way and realized that the crashing, shrieking, and laughter that had woken her was not a falling city, or even a pit of demons rising to the surface of the world. She knew Brunhilda’s singing voice too well by now.
Arash stepped out into the library.
Someone had turned the chandelier into a zipline, anchoring it between the ceiling and a structural beam on the first floor. Tek the goblin jumped off the second story balcony, screaming with delight as he careened into the pile of couch cushions below. The spike-legged man – whose name she’d gathered actually was Spike – stood at the ready on the balcony to crank the chandelier back up so he could have a go at it.
Tales From the Crucible Page 11
