by Liz Williams
“Sorry,” Gremory said, perfunctorily. Ahead, a landing opened out into a high, airy room, with unglazed windows which should have been open to the sky. The entire room was filled with sticky red strands, undulating faintly as if in a draught. They glistened.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Don’t touch them.”
Shadow did not need to be told. They moved on, finding the same strange threads filling other rooms, and stretching out above their heads to the ceiling of the passages. There was no discernible smell that Shadow could detect, but the threads looked alarmingly like bloody sinews-fibrous tendons connecting bones to tissue more properly found inside a living creature, not inhabiting a fortress.
Thirty-Six
Deed was speaking to the Librarian’s blood. He crouched in front of an alembic, watching as the liquid it contained bubbled and congealed. He had already added the substances that would precipitate the nigredo to it-eking out the blood with a fluid condenser-and had carefully scraped the resulting residue from the bottom of the retort. He was now well into the second stage of the process. Around him, the boards of the chamber crackled with spells, keeping any wards contained within the Librarian’s blood well within bounds. He doubted that Mercy Fane herself knew they were there, or what the oaths that she had taken had produced. Deed smiled, imagining Mercy as young, ardent, keen, and completely ignorant of what she was actually letting herself in for. The Skein had, Deed was forced to admit, certainly done a pretty effective number on their personnel. If Mercy knew what her initiation had done, and how it had changed her, he wondered whether she would be so zealous in her defence of the Library. Perhaps she would. People, Deed was the first to admit, were weird.
He dropped the preparation of powdered blood into a nearby crucible and took a pipette. With this, a drop of the boiling blood was added, along with a preparation of fuller’s earth and copper. Deed, murmuring under his breath, added elements to the mixture until an unwholesome sludge formed in the bottom of the crucible. Not promising. Never mind, thought Deed. There were more ways than one if this didn’t work.
Deed recited a long sequence of spells with ease. Disir memory was long, and retentive, especially when combined with human powers of analysis. Then he placed the crucible back over the flame and waited for a moment. The crucible sparked and crackled with momentary electricity and something began to rise and flex in the base. Deed stood back, and watched with satisfaction.
Thirty-Seven
Mercy looked at the Court from the vantage point of the Library steps. On returning from the Northern Quarter, they had come straight back to the Library and the late afternoon sun was strong, falling clear as honey over the surfaces of the buildings and the marble of the square, imbuing it with a lucidity that made it almost transparent. It was a relief to be out of the northern part of the city, away from the snow. The Western Quarter felt almost tropical. The sun was going down over the Western Ocean: she could see it in a gap between the buildings, making the sea molten. It was not long till dusk.
She had no intention of telling anyone what she was planning, only Perra, who had seen Mareritt and heard what Salt had to say, but the ka kept its own counsel. She could feel the geas at the back of her head: a magical engine, driving her on. Infuriating, but she’d tried everything she could think of to dislodge it and nothing had worked. Followed by the silent Perra, she took the staircase up to the summit of the building and a view of the Court: the black façade, shadowy in the sunlight, and the perpetual glitter of the golden vanes that rode the air above it, testing the direction of the magics that coiled around its eaves.
When she once more stepped out onto the roof of the Library, Mercy had woven a trail of thought, untraceable behind the solid walls of the Library itself, a trail of memory that would enable anyone who knew what they were doing to follow her. If necessary.
She hoped that wouldn’t have to happen. What she was doing was risky, but it was the only way in, and daylight-just on the turn-was the safest time. Now, she hoped, with the onset of twilight, the Court would be preoccupied with closing its main entrance and reaffirming its wards, rather than with what might be happening on its roof.
Mercy perched on the roof of the Library, steadying herself on the arm of a stone spirit. The spirit gazed sightlessly out across the city; a sculpture that had been old when the world was young. It had come with the Library from Egypt, a human figure with a bird’s head. The beak had long since worn away, impossible to tell now whether it had been hawk or ibis or owl. Mercy had studied it before, and sometimes when it rained, she thought she detected the gleam of life in its sightless eyes, like a flicker of movement at the bottom of a pool.
It was not raining now. The sun was a line of flame above the horizon and as she watched it slipped below the world into night. Behind her, above the Eastern Quarter, the sky was already deepening to aquamarine. On the stone spirit’s shoulder crouched the ka.
Mercy took her notes from her pocket. She had jotted down a number of things relating to the Court: old tales, ancient stories. No poems, though, although she had found several; they were too unstable for the purpose she had in mind. Glancing down at her notes, she began to speak.
“… and there was a guild of Magicians, who summoned demons from the storms of the air…
Once upon a time, there was a boy…
The nature of the Lemegeton is this, that it is the word of Solomon the King…
She did not know who the old man might be, but…
… and the conjuror took his handkerchief out of his pocket and from it, he brought a dove… ”
As she spoke, she looked out across the air. A fragile bridge of words was beginning to link the summit of the Library with the golden-vaned rooftop of the Court. Mercy spoke on, weaving words into the air, drawing in the last of the light to power her tale, rendering it into a storyway: a story of a boy and a magician and a dove. No demons, though: she didn’t want to take the risk. The ka stirred, restless, on the stone spirit’s shoulder. When she was sure that the story had taken form, Mercy stepped out onto the storyway, praying to the stone spirit behind her that it would bear her weight.
The storyway held. Mercy stepped out onto words, snatches of phrase, trailing sentences. She walked a careful tightrope, not looking down, although the sparkling sunlit cradle beneath her, woven out of the lastlight, would conceal her from view from below.
And from the Court? Well, hopefully.
She did not look back, and did not know whether Perra was following. But when she stepped onto the battlement of the House of the Court, still shrouded in story, she looked down to see the ka at her feet.
Behind her, the story faded into the dusk. Mercy tensed but there were no sirens, shrieks, betraying cries, even though both her feet were now balancing on the parapet. She glanced back to see the stone spirit directly opposite, several hundred yards away. She thought she must have imagined the look of disapproval on its weathered face.
Not wanting to speak aloud, she motioned to the ka. The parapet led onto a sloping roof, mazed with spell-vanes. Golden griffins, dragons, cockerels spun in the twilight breeze. Mercy tasted magic on her tongue; the flavours of fire and nutmeg, of charcoal and iron and wood smoke. She tasted metal, the alchemical drift of currents slipping up between cracks in the floorboards below, between the tiles. She smelled roses and ash, myrrh and pine resin, and weaving between the spell-vanes she saw a drift of colours against the twilight air: azure and gold, jade and swallow’s-wing indigo.
The trick was to avoid these tides of magic. She did not want to run the risk of sending something back, disturbing a trace and advertising her presence on the roof. She stepped cautiously, taking care that her sleeve should not brush the spines of the spell-vanes. Mercy knew they could not see her, although their golden eyes seemed to follow her, knowingly. She breathed spells of invisibility, drawing disguise from the air, but she knew that these would not last for long. The ka padded ahead, wings carefully
furled.
At the far side of the roof stood a turret. It had no door, being open to the four winds. Symbols of coloured glass hung in each quarter: blue, green, yellow, red, turning lazily in the wind and catching the light from a lamp that hung beneath the eaves of the turret. Cautiously, Mercy ducked under the arch. The turret was wider than it appeared and a set of stone steps led downwards in a spiral. Mercy looked at Perra, mouthed, Ready?
Side by side, they began to descend the stairs.
Halfway down, Mercy and Perra heard footsteps, coming up. There was nowhere to hide. Mercy cursed, and brought the sword up. The footsteps turned away, into a lower room. Mercy exhaled. Quickly, they padded down the stairs and onto a narrow landing.
The Court was a maze, labyrinthine passages and very little sense of symmetry. It was impossible to tell where they were in the building: they went up steps, down steps, through doorways and around sudden sharp corners. Once Mercy heard voices and retreated, retracing her steps, but the rooms here looked completely different and she began to despair of ever finding her way out again, let alone of locating a lock that Mareritt’s key fit. She whispered her concerns to Perra.
“Ask it,” the ka advised.
Feeling foolish, Mercy did so.
“Straight on,” sang out a small, metallic voice, obligingly. Raising an eyebrow, Mercy followed its instructions, which began to come more and more quickly. The key led them down further flights of stairs, through empty chambers, skirting the sound of voices, footsteps, the sudden whir of machinery. Mercy was used to the convoluted corridors of the Library, but the Library possessed a harmony, a unifying conception of architecture that made it feel as though you ought to know where you were, even if you didn’t. The Court, in comparison, was cramped or overtly spacious, too dark or lit by searing lamplight. Its proportions were wrong and nothing seemed even. Mercy wondered whether this was to confuse visitors, or its occupants. The atmosphere was filled with competing magics: sigils which hissed and spat at one another like warring cats from opposing doorways, bristling wards which raked the skin with icy needles or which scored with scorches of flame. The House of the Court seemed made of dark oak, worn stone, ancient glass, and to Mercy’s trained Librarian’s eye it breathed out stories. She could detect the scraps and tatters of legend embedded in the framework of the building, imprisoned and jammed together in an enforced attempt at control.
“Left!” sang the key, and Mercy obeyed.
Deed stood back, pleased with his endeavours. The thing was taking shape, curdling and writhing in the crucible. As he watched, the eyes opened in the rudimentary head, a dull toad-gold.
Deed squatted down on his heels to bring himself level with the crucible.
“Can you hear me?”
A pause. Then the thing gave a slow nod.
“And clearly you can understand,” Deed said. “Good. I want you to listen carefully. There’s something I want you to do… ”
“Where now?” Mercy asked the key. They were standing in front of an old oak door, black with age or fire. The door, which was closed, lay at the end of a passage, which smelled of damp stone.
“This is my door,” the key sang.
“Oh!” Mercy said. She looked down at the ka. “Did you hear that?” Exhilarated by the discovery, but knowing it would be a mistake to be too gung-ho, she asked the key, “What’s behind the door?”
“The library.”
Good.
“Is there anyone likely to be in there?” she asked the key. Presumably not, if the door was locked, but you never knew. They could have locked it from the inside and it was doubtful that this was the only key.
“I do not know.”
The geas twitched inside her mind. Bending, Mercy slipped the key into the lock. It fitted and the lock turned. Mercy stepped through into the library of the Court.
Deed leaped back as the glass of the crucible shattered. Like birth, he supposed, with an element of the violent and bloody about it. The homunculus, toad-eyes blinking, spat a sliver of glass from its mouth and sprang to the floor.
“Go, then,” Deed hissed. He brought down the black-handled knife and the wards around the apparatus fell noiselessly away. The homunculus raced towards the open window and shot out into the night.
“Homing instinct,” Deed murmured. He reached out an arm and swept the glass shards to the floor.
If she’d stepped into the room with her eyes closed, Mercy would have recognised it as a library. It had something to do with the weight of the air, with the quality of soundlessness inside the room. But she had no intention of closing her eyes and the purpose of the room was evident from the rows of stacked books. Most were leather-spined and cracked with age, their gilt peeling, although she noticed a row of scrolls, piled edge on.
Mercy took a deep breath. This wasn’t just a private library. These were the books The Great Library of Worldsoul had failed to procure, the books which fell through cracks in realities, the books which were the most dangerous of all. This room contained grimoires: she could tell that by their iron-blood-charcoal smell and the wincing sensation of her skin, as though spiders walked across her flesh. These were the books of magic and sacrifice, of punishment and control. Some of these books, like the text from which the disir had sprung, would be bound with human skin flayed from a living victim. Mercy had met several books of which she was actively afraid, and a number which merely made her nervous. She did not, yet, know which category the books in this library would fall into.
Mareritt had said: You’ll know when you see it. Not very helpful, thought Mercy, but she was here now and she had to try, so she stepped further into the library and began to work her way as quickly and methodically as possible along the stacks. Even the shelves here were enchanted, made of bog oak and bound with silver and iron bands on which rows of runes had been inscribed. She recognised these as aggressive wards, a level of protection which the Library for which she worked rarely deployed: she could think of only a couple of cases. Something, or someone, had died to make sure that the contents of these books remained contained within those shelves. When she had come through the door, all manner of complex magics had reworked themselves around her, responding to the crucial presence of the key; if she had not been wielding that, she doubted whether she would now be still alive.
She concentrated at first on the scrolls, but they felt dead, or very inactive. That was probably a good thing, and she moved on to study the spines of a dark-bound set of books standing on a neighbouring shelf. All grimoires, but at the far end of the shelf beyond, the geas gave a violent start, like a startled horse, and in front of her she found a book with a bind-rune stamped on its skin cover and a title: The Winter Book. Bulls-eye! She took the book cautiously down from the shelf and opened it.
The book was written in what looked like Danish. From the scrolled gilt on its leather cover, she thought it was probably Victorian.
Perra said, “Someone is coming.”
“Shit!” Mercy had, with the assistance of the key, locked the door behind her, but Perra was right, she could hear shuffling sounds outside. She tucked The Winter Book under her jacket, darted to the end of the library and took refuge behind a stack. The library was relatively dimly lit, though Mercy could not see why, and hopefully large enough to avoid the person.
The door opened. Footsteps came along one of the rows, then stopped. Mercy held her breath. She didn’t think it was the same row from which she had taken the book and she hoped The Winter Book would keep its pages shut: books had been known to shout out before now. It must be nice, she thought bitterly, to live in a place like Earth, where inanimate objects didn’t have their own opinions. A jumbled montage of stories-millstones and necklaces and spinning wheels that shouted, “Help! Help!” when stolen-rapidly crossed Mercy’s mind’s eye. It was all Earth’s fault, anyway, for being a place where folk had imaginations. She clutched the book a little more tightly, but it did not speak.
The person was coming alon
g the stacks. Mercy didn’t have any great impression of stealth, but if the person suspected she was there, why didn’t they simply accost her? Although it wasn’t like the Court to do things in an obvious manner.
The footsteps-a quick clicking tapping sound-abruptly stopped. Mercy looked down and saw that Perra was as still as a hunting cat. Only the tip of the ka’s leonine tail was twitching. She could hear a second, smaller ticking sound, but she did not know what that was. She was reminded of beetles, of bombs. She took a breath and peered, very cautiously, around the edge of the stack.
A woman stood further down the row, tapping a fountain pen against her teeth. It was this that had produced the clicking sound. The woman was young, with ice-blond hair bound up in a chignon. Her face was wide at the forehead, tapering to a pointed chin. As if she was aware of Mercy watching, she turned for a moment and looked down the row. Mercy caught her breath but the woman’s expression was absent, as if thinking. Her eyes, wide set, were a cold blue. She wore a black suit: a hobble skirt and a ruffled black jacket with a high collar. A cameo brooch clasped it at the neck; Mercy wondered what the cameo showed.
And high heels. With a sudden jolt, Mercy saw that the woman was not wearing shoes. Her bare ankles, visible beneath the long skirt, were pale skinned and extended to long spurs of spined bone. Her toes were talons. Appalled, Mercy looked at the girl’s hands; they, too, had long iron-coloured nails.
She heard the library door open and close. Someone said, “Darya?”
A male voice that slid across the skin. Mercy remembered the voice, a soothing doctor’s tone that reassured and held promises. Promises that were then violated.
“Abbot General?” Darya sounded nervous. Mercy was not entirely surprised.
