The Archive of the Forgotten

by A J Hackwith

  He 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.”

  “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.

  “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.

  Rami had always had a weak spot for humans.

  Hero’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—” 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—every single book. You knew she was close to the damsels?”

  “I assumed as books—”

  “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—” 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.”

  “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.

  None 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—found him an irritating distraction whenever they shared the same space—and thought the feeling had been mutual, as Hero had returned the favor.

  And yet here he was. Asking . . . for what exactly? “You propose an independent investigation?” Rami guessed.

  “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.”

  Rami 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.”

  “Not,” Hero said cautiously, “the ones we need.”

  It 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?”

  “Not technically!” Hero said quickly. “Just a different wing! Or two. Three.”

  “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.”

  “It’s not. I swear it’s not! Watcher—” 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—”

  Rami would not just. He stormed ahead, turned the corner to the vault Claire intended for the artifacts—and nearly ran straight into a narrow wall of velvet and copper.

  Hero 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.

  “Move,” Rami gritted through his teeth.

  “Not until you listen, stone man.” When Rami didn’t rush him, Hero slowly lowered his arms. “I’ve thought a lot about this—”

  “I bet you have.”

  “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?”

  “Claire has suffered enough. I won’t have you—”

  Hero 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?”

  Rami shifted with the disquiet thought. “Claire and Brevity—”

  “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.

  He 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.”

  “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.

  “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—there are answers out there, Rami. I know it.”

  “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.

  “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.”

  “Librarians lend books. Last I checked, you were not a librarian.”

  “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.”

  Rami narrowed his eyes. “You never told anyone how you did that.”

  “Well, then.” Hero hummed. “I’d think it your duty to take any opportunity to investigate this security flaw.”

  Hero’s wide-eyed look was impressive. Rami was not impressed. “Or I could just tell Brevity and Claire.”

  “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—”

  “Stamped—”

  “—loyal 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.

  Rami 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.

  Not like Hero.

  But 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.

  It 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—then 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.

  He supposed it was a way to serve.

  “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?”

  “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?”

  “A mystery, you call it. To find out what the other realms know that we don’t. To find out what books are.”

  Hero’s smile faltered, but he rallied as Rami reluctantly shook his hand. “To find out what I am.”

  Hero’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.

  An investigation. Just an investigation. Rami rooted the thought in his mind, hoping it would drive away the uncertain turn in his stomach.

  7

  BREVITY

  You’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.

  When 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.

  Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1803 CE

  THE 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.

  She 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.

  21st 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.

  The 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.

  I shouldn’t be here. This isn’t fair. None of this is fair.

  Hell 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.

  A 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.

  It had a homey tune to it that Brevity had thought she’d almost forgotten.

  Every 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.

  Instead, she took a slow, centering breath—in four through nose, out five through mouth—and turned toward the figure that approached, not from the wing’s front doors, but from the gloom of the stacks.

  Probity 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.”

  Probity 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—called wells—to 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—and all the hard work of creation that could only come from humans, of course, but muses tended to gloss over that part.

  The 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.

  She just never thought she’d lose it.

  “What’s in it?” Brevity asked instead.

  Probity 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.”

  Brevity tilted her head. “You were never interested in alchemy before.”

  “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.”

  “You’ve grown up so much,” Brevity murmured, mostly to herself, but Probity’s ears still tipped pink.

  “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.

  Probity 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 h
er 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.”

  “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.”

  “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.”

  Probity 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.”

  Warmth 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.”

  Probity 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.”

  “She didn’t . . .” Brevity hesitated, before amending, “She didn’t mean to.”

  Probity 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.

  “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.”