“Yes,” she said with a nod. “I don’t speak for myself. I speak for the land, and the people. I put them ahead of myself, always.”
“It’s the opposite of dominating, really,” Charlie said, with the clear-sighted intelligence she’d started to expect from him.
“That’s right,” Kenneret said. She lifted her chin and gazed at her uncle, who stared back at her, his mouth open a little. “I am queen,” she said simply. “We are queen. And as long as we are alive, Uncle, you will never rule this kingdom.”
“As long as you are alive?” he said, snapping to attention again. In one graceful move, he bent, grabbed the short sword from the floor, and was on his feet again, sighting down the blade. “I don’t need any scroll for this.”
Quickly she surveyed the swords that were left on the floor. Broadsword—too heavy. Cutlass—too limited.
Deciding, she bent and seized the rapier, which had Alex’s blood crusting at its tip. Leaping to her feet, her skirts swirling around her, she raised the rapier just as her uncle lunged toward her, his sword aimed at her heart.
Ignoring Charlie’s yell of warning, and Alex’s dismayed gasp, she focused all of her attention on the blade coming toward her. Smoothly, with the ease of long practice, she parried the short sword and launched her own attack, the tip of her rapier opening a gash along the yellow silk of her uncle’s sleeve. He flinched away, then raised his sword again. “You’ve been—” He panted. “You’ve been studying the sword?”
“Yes, Uncle Patch,” she said softly, without taking her eyes from his. “For years. I’m very good.”
“Good?” His usually calm face distorted into a snarl. “You are no threat to me—you are nothing more than a little girl!” And he came at her again, in a rush, his sword swinging wildly.
“A girl,” she answered calmly, leaning away and letting one of his swings flail past her nose, “who had sense enough to know that as queen, I would need to learn”—she parried his blade and flicked the wickedly sharp tip of the rapier against his sword hand—“how to fight.”
His hand streaming blood, he dropped his sword, which fell to the floor with a clatter.
“And how to win,” she added, and brought the rapier up and held it to her uncle’s throat.
At the same moment, she heard a rush of footsteps from behind the room’s fourth door.
In here, sir! she heard—the voice of the Family soldier Jeffen. Then a jingle of keys at the lock. “Charlie!” she ordered. A second later, her brother was at her side. “Take this.” She handed him the rapier and stepped back. No sense in revealing her skill with the sword, since she’d been keeping it a secret for so long. Charlie nodded, understanding, and pointed the rapier at their uncle, who was staring at her, blood dripping from his hand and staining his coat sleeve.
She saw Alex trying to struggle to his feet. He caught her eye. “I can’t let him see me like this,” he gasped.
With a nod, she rushed to his side and grabbed his elbow, hauling him up.
The door burst open, and the Swift strode into the room.
27
Alex saw his father survey the room in one eaglelike glance, taking in Lord Patch with Charlie holding the rapier at his throat; the queen, safe; the two bloodied swords on the floor. The dark eyes narrowed as they fell on Alex.
“Jeffen, Franciss,” the Swift ordered, pointing toward Patch without taking his eyes from Alex. The two Family soldiers, sleek and deadly in their black uniforms, swarmed into the room and grabbed the queen’s uncle, while Charlie stepped back and lowered the rapier. The steward was there, too, with the ring of keys that she’d used to open the door. They all smelled faintly of smoke.
Charlie stared at the Swift, his eyes wide and full of hero worship.
The Swift nodded to the queen, who was still at Alex’s side. Holding him up, he had to admit. His head was spinning from blood loss and exhaustion, and every inch of him hurt.
“Just prop me against the wall,” he muttered to Kenneret, “and step aside. There’s going to be shouting.”
“Shut up, Alex,” she whispered back.
The Swift had his hands on his hips. His keen eyes examined Alex from head to foot. “You all right, son?”
Alex couldn’t meet his gaze. “Just fine, obviously.”
“Good.” And then his pa crossed the space between them, grabbed Alex, and swept him into a hug.
“Ow, Pa,” Alex gasped. “Ribs.”
“Idiot,” his father growled, and then Alex felt him kiss the top of his head, and then his big hands were setting him back against the wall, and he’d turned and started issuing orders, flinging a question at the steward, asking the queen where they should imprison Lord Patch, saying that the fire in the library was under control.
Charlie sidled closer. “Good thing I’ve got the thinking-mitten,” he heard Charlie say, and then he felt the other boy use it to try to stop the bleeding from the rapier wound.
Alex’s head was floating very far above the rest of his body. He felt his knees shaking, and then he slid to the floor and everything went black.
He woke up not much later, bandaged, in a bedroom draped in black velvet and encrusted with tarnished gold. A few of his pages hovered worriedly near his pillow. Sitting up in the bed, he felt a deep ache in his bones, and a sharper pain where the rapier had gone in. But his head was clear. Sort of. Carefully he swung his legs out of the bed.
“Oh, you’re awake, are you?” Charlie asked, getting up from a nearby chair.
Alex gave him his nastiest glare, which was returned with a typically Charlie grin. “I have to talk to your sister,” Alex said. He was wearing his own trousers over the bandage on his leg, and a clean shirt over the bandages on his chest. Charlie’s shirt, judging by how big it was on him.
“She’s busy,” Charlie said. “Now, the doctor left you this medicine.” He crossed to a table, where he poured something into a glass, which he brought to Alex.
Alex examined the liquid, then sniffed it. “I’m not drinking this.”
“Yes you are,” Charlie said, and stood over him with arms folded until he’d gulped half of it down.
“So . . .” Charlie began.
Alex interrupted him with a brisk “No.” He knew what his friend wanted to talk about.
Ignoring his protest, Charlie asked, “The Swift is your father?”
“What do you think?” Alex said sharply. “You were there when he called me his son, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but I can’t help but notice,” Charlie said cheerfully, “you look nothing like him. He’s got that rich skin color of the old nobility, and you’re as pale as paper.” He looked Alex over. “Even paler than usual, really.”
“Oh, you noticed that, did you?” Alex asked, letting acid drip from his words. Then he sighed. “It’s a long story, Charlie, and I’m not going to tell it to you now.”
“All right,” Charlie said, unfazed. “He’s amazing, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Alex agreed. “He is.” He didn’t want what his pa wanted, but it didn’t mean he loved his pa any less.
“Welp, you’d better drink the rest of the medicine,” Charlie said, and held up the glass.
After he’d forced the rest of it down, Alex got to his feet. Which were bare. “Where are my shoes?” he asked, looking around.
“You’re supposed to stay in bed,” Charlie protested.
“I told you,” Alex said, fixing on the bedroom door. “I have to talk to the queen.”
Ignoring Charlie’s protests, he started toward the door, only wobbling a little bit. He had to make sure she hadn’t burned the Scroll or the Keys Treatise, and he had to be sure the fire in the library was well and truly out, and he had to start going through the books to find out what had been burned, and what could be salvaged, and . . .
Opening the door, he walked right into Kenneret, who had been about to come into the room. Behind her loomed the Swift, and three of the Family, and the steward with her pinche
d, disapproving mouth.
Alex staggered back, then braced himself against the door frame. “Your Majesty,” he began. “You haven’t—”
“Alex,” she interrupted. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“Sorry, Kennie,” Charlie put in. “He said he had to talk to you.”
“We are sure that he thinks he does,” she said.
“Since you’re up, Alexandren,” the Swift said in the tone he used when giving orders, “you can get properly dressed and ready to leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” Alex told him.
His pa’s thick eyebrows lowered. One of them was bisected by an old scar that ran over his forehead and into his hairline. “You are going back home to resume your training.”
“No I’m not,” Alex insisted. His head was starting to feel funny again. “I’m staying here. I’m a librarian. It’s not—”
Kenneret raised her hand, interrupting him, and he fell silent. She was still bedraggled from their pursuit of Lord Patch, smudged with dust and soot, with a smear of his own blood down her right sleeve, her hair straggling out of its braids, and she looked more queenly than he’d ever seen her. “Alex,” she said calmly, and pointed. “Bed. Now.”
With a sigh, Alex turned and trudged back to the bed.
“How did you do that, Your Majesty?” he heard his father ask.
“Do what?” Kenneret responded.
His pa blew out a frustrated breath. “Get him to do what he’s told.”
“We are the queen,” was Kenneret’s simple answer.
She was.
And he was a librarian. Why couldn’t his pa see that? Alex flopped down on the bed. The medicine they’d given him must’ve had a sleeping draft in it. His eyelids felt so heavy. “Kennie,” he murmured. “Don’t burn the Scroll, all right?” He had to tell her what he’d realized while she’d been telling Lord Patch what being queen really meant. The Lost Books. He’d been right about them all along—yes, they hated him, but they were not evil. They all had the self of their writer trapped in them. They were alive. He was a librarian, and it wasn’t his job to lock them up, or destroy them, or kill them.
He had to find all of the Lost Books and figure out how to set them free.
He heard footsteps cross the room and then felt her warm breath on his cheek as she bent to whisper in his ear. “Don’t worry, Alex. I’m not going to burn any books. Go to sleep.”
And so he did.
28
Somehow Kenneret had gotten his pa to go back to the fortress and the Family without him.
Well, not somehow. She must have done that queen thing. She’d gotten really good at it.
Things with his pa weren’t settled yet—they weren’t even close to being settled—and part of him wished he could go back to the fortress and be the Family’s little brother, and take up his training again, and be the son his pa really wanted. But he couldn’t.
Because he had work to do.
His recovery from the fight with the swords didn’t take very long. As soon as he was up, he went to find Kenneret in her office, where she had piles of papers on her polished desk, with secretaries bustling in and out carrying letters and files. Her steward was there, too, giving Alex a gimlet-eyed look as he came in.
The queen signed something, gave it to a secretary, and nodded at Alex. “Dorriss, a chair for the librarian, please.”
“I’m fine,” Alex said impatiently. “I just want the keys to the library back.” Someone—the steward, he guessed—had taken them while he’d been recovering.
One of the secretaries placed a chair before her desk.
With a huff of impatience, he sat. “I don’t have time for this,” he complained. “The books have to be settled. I need to be sure the Lost Books are safe, and start repairing the damage from the fire. Among other things.”
With extremely exasperating calm, Kennie folded her hands and rested them on a stack of papers on her desk. “Alex,” she began.
“What.” He narrowed his eyes. She was up to something.
“My uncle said something very interesting when I was fighting him. Did you notice?”
“I’d just had several holes poked in me,” he said. “I was a little distracted.” He shifted on his chair. It had the world’s hardest pillow on it. From what he could see, the queen had a fluffy, very comfortable-looking pillow on her own chair.
“I will remind you,” she said. “He said that our country was far greater sixty years ago than it is now. Sixty years. An interesting number, don’t you think?”
Suddenly, he was paying attention. “That’s when the Lost Books were created. The librarians fought them, and then they closed the libraries.”
“Yes. For the past sixty years,” Kennie said, “this country has been weakening, stagnant. My uncle was right about that. He assumed it meant we need a man like him to be a strong leader. But that’s not what we need. For sixty years, nothing has changed. Nothing new has been invented, no new knowledge has been created, no new books have been written. We look inward, we don’t ask any questions. For sixty years, Alex, the libraries have been locked.”
His heart was pounding. “And they have to stay locked.”
“Is that so?” She cocked her head and gave him a keen look. He’d seen it before—she’d had the same focused look on her face when she’d faced down her uncle’s sword. “Then I have a question for you, Librarian. What is a book’s purpose? What is a book for?”
He wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “A book is for reading.”
She nodded. “Exactly.” She smiled. “I am glad we agree. You will prepare the library to be opened.”
“Wait, what?” He got to his feet, ignoring the twinge from the almost-healed rapier wound. “Opened? No. Absolutely not.”
She stood, her hands on her desk, leaning toward him. On her braided hair, the crown gleamed, and her face was alight with excitement. She was somebody, Alex realized, who didn’t need any magical scroll to be a great queen. She had vision. “Alex, you idiot,” she said quickly. “Books should not be covered with dust in locked-up libraries. They’re supposed to be alive and awake and read. By readers. You should know this! You’re a librarian!”
He blinked and felt like he’d just had an entire shelf of books dropped on his head.
Because she was right. It wasn’t just the Lost Books.
All of the books needed to be free.
Alex and Miss Bug were sitting across from each other at one of the long reading tables in the cavernous main room of the library, going through the cards from the catalog. His pages fluttered around him, ready to go search for books and report back if they found them.
Tiny Miss Bug sat on a pile of four pillows to bring her up to the level of the table. She peered at a card and set it in the pile they’d set aside for books that were still missing.
The Scroll of Kings and the Keys Treatise were locked in a metal box in the fortified room, along with all the other books that had been marked. They’d be safe there, as long as nobody tried to read them, as Patch had.
The winding staircases that had been destroyed when the blackpowder book had exploded were still damaged. He and Bug were using tall ladders to get from one level to the next. A dusting of soot covered everything. There was a blackened crater on the fourth floor, and the arrows that had been aimed at him still bristled from the books near the stairs on the second level. Hundreds of other books were scattered around the main room. Many shelves of books in the rest of the library had been damaged. It would take years to set it right.
But he was a librarian. That was his job.
And once they had the worst of the mess cleared up, he’d do what the queen ordered. He’d open up the library so the books could be read.
He made a note on a catalog card and passed it across the table to Miss Bug. She blinked at it, wrinkled up her nose, and put it on the Not Found pile.
Alex arranged six more cards on the table before him. Then he paused and look
ed up. Absently he rubbed the ring of letters that encircled his left wrist. The table, he realized, was vibrating.
Miss Bug looked up from her work and met his gaze. Her big eyes blinked behind her thick spectacles.
From overhead came a screeching sound, like something hurtling very fast through the air. A second later, three books, their covers flapping like wings, shot from an arched doorway on the fifth level. Banking, they folded their pages back and plummeted through the big room. Aimed at him.
The Lost Books symbol blazed from the covers of all three books.
Pushing back his chair, Alex dove under the table, then crawled across and grabbed Miss Bug and dragged her under, too.
Thump-thump-thump as all three books hit the tabletop. Catalog cards blew up and then rained down all around them.
Blast it, Alex thought. That was days of work.
“Out!” piped Miss Bug, and pointed with a twiglike finger at the library door.
As more books dive-bombed them, he and Bug scrambled from under the table.
They stumbled out into the hallway, slamming the door behind them.
Panting, Alex slid down to sit on the worn carpet of the hallway floor, leaning on the wall. Miss Bug crouched beside him.
They both eyed the library door. It shuddered under the sound of the three books—or more—battering at it, trying to get out.
“I thought we were done with this,” Alex said.
“I told you,” Miss Bug said, sounding satisfied. “You should hide.”
“I hate it when you’re cryptic,” he said, giving her a narrow-eyed glare. “Can’t you just come out and tell me what you know?”
She folded herself into a ball and sat with her chin on her knees, looking like a little fluffy owl. “I’m not a librarian. I don’t know as much as you think I do.” After a silent moment, her little hands reached out and pushed up the cuff of his shirt, revealing the ring of letters printed around his wrist. “Tell how this happened.”
Yes, she was right. It all had to do with the fact that he was marked.
“Tell,” Miss Bug prompted.
“All right,” Alex agreed. “When I was a kid, I found the key to my pa’s library, and I went in and read every book in it.” He went on to tell her the rest of the story, how he’d found the Red Codex that smelled of spices and smoke, how it was heavier than the other books. Then he told how the words had crawled out of the Codex and around his wrist, and how the letters sometimes re-formed into words of warning or advice. As he finished telling, he studied the jumble of letters, dark against his pale skin.
The Lost Books Page 18
