“I got one,” said an enormous man with a great big beard. It was warm in the tavern, but the man insisted on wearing a giant bearskin cloak—complete with head and claws—that went all the way to the floor. The man’s beard was so long and tangled that it was difficult to tell where the cloak ended and his face began. “It’s a tale from my younger days as a farmer,” he said. “About a poacher I caught trying to nick a nest of dragon eggs. It all started on a summer morn . . .”
Sophie stared at the man—his grizzled face, his matted hair, his feral eyes, and, most of all, that bearskin cloak. Something about him was maddeningly familiar. “I know you!” she blurted out, snapping her fingers. “You’re Saint Martin!”
The man, who did not look like the type accustomed to being interrupted, emitted a peevish growl. “Obviously.” He turned back to the scrivener. “As I was saying, this poacher came down the dragon roost—”
Sophie, however, was undeterred. “You’re the real Saint Martin,” she said. “From the Bruin’s Bath.”
This drew an unexpected burst of laughter from the other patrons, and Saint Martin’s already ruddy face darkened to a deep red. “The Bruin’s Bath!” he muttered, disgust thick in his voice. “I’ve defended nations with my bear hands, killed trolls, and hunted witches—but you slip in one little dung heap, and that’s all they remember about you for the next hundred years . . .” He jabbed a thick finger at Sophie. “You keep on like that, lass, and maybe my next story’ll be about how I gobbled up a little girl.”
“Hey!” Peter got up from his stool. “I don’t appreciate you threatening my friend.”
The man stood up. His head very nearly grazed the roof. “What are you gonna do about it? Stick me with that toothpick?”
Peter stood his ground. “Faster than you can blink.”
Sophie had read many stories about Saint Martin, and if even half of them were true, then this was not a man they wanted to anger. “Peter,” she whispered, “I appreciate the gesture, but I’d rather take the insult and keep you in one piece.”
It is lamentably common among chivalrous sorts that they are more intent on defending a woman’s honor than listening to the actual wishes of said woman. In this spirit, Peter ignored Sophie’s request and raised his weapon. “Apologize,” he said. “I won’t ask again.”
There was a palpable tensing in the room as everyone watching seemed to hold their breath. Saint Martin growled at the boy. “Haven’t you ever heard what they say about poking a bear?” He reached for the cowl of his bearskin cloak—
“Martin,” said a calm but commanding voice. It was Scrivener Behn. Everyone in the room—even Saint Martin—turned to look at the man. “The children meant no harm,” the scrivener continued, still writing. “You should be flattered that your legacy remains in any form. That is more than most of us get. Even if it’s less than we deserve.”
Saint Martin stared at Peter, his teeth set in an ugly grimace. “You’re lucky it’s Vespers . . .” He let go of his cloak and lumbered back to his stool.
“Thank you, Martin,” said the scrivener. He turned to a new page. “Perhaps it is time we hear a story from the girl and her companions, who have brought with them so much trouble.”
Every person in the circle turned to face Sophie, who suddenly felt very uncomfortable. “W-w-what kind of story?” Her voice shook slightly, and her hands were wet with perspiration. Sophie, who had read thousands of stories in her life, found herself unprepared when faced with the task of telling one herself.
The man dipped his quill in the inkwell. “You will tell the first story every person tells when they arrive at the Last Resort,” he said. “The story of how you came to find yourself here, at the edge of the world.”
Sophie nodded, clasping the bell hanging from her neck. The scrivener would not look at her, and so she wasn’t sure whom she should address. She settled on staring at a cluster of sprites at the far end of the room. “My name is Sophie Quire. I’m a bookmender from Bustleburgh. I’m here because . . . well, because we’re looking for you, Scrivener Behn.”
There was a murmur in the room. The scrivener’s pen had stopped moving.
“Sophie Quire?” he said, almost in a whisper. He looked up from his work for the first time since appearing at the Last Resort. When his eyes met Sophie’s, his face shifted into a portrait of perfect wonder. He tilted his head, and his mouth moved as if he were trying and failing to find something appropriate to say. “You are the very picture of your mother.”
Sophie tried to keep the shiver from her voice. “So I’m told.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE BOOK of WHERE
Sophie met the scrivener’s dark gaze. The room creaked as the Last Resort swayed slightly in the current. Looking directly at the man now, she could see that his skin was not quite so dark as she had thought; rather, he had marked himself with tattooed letters that covered every inch of his face and hands—a living book. “I am the last Storyguard,” she said to the room. “Daughter of Coriander Quire. Keeper of the books of Who and What. And I’ve come for The Book of Where.”
“You have come for more than that, I think.” Scrivener Behn’s voice was unexpectedly soft. He rose from his stool, speaking to the room. “Vespers is adjourned.” If anyone in the tavern objected, they kept these objections to themselves. Behn collected his paper and ink and motioned at Sophie. “What I have to say is for you alone.”
Akrasia growled beside Sophie. “The girl is not the only one owed explanations.”
The man looked at the tigress. His eyes moved the length of her golden chain, and his expression softened. “Forgive me, Akrasia. It has been many years since we last met, and I did not recognize you. You may come, as well. But the others must remain here.”
He walked toward a small room behind the bar. Sophie started to follow him, but Taro rose and blocked her path. She tried to step around him, but he grabbed her arm. “You have to stay here, Taro,” Sophie said. “I’ll be all right.”
The room swayed perilously to one side. “He’s not worried about you,” Peter said. “He’s worried about the books. He won’t let them out of his sight.”
Sophie took a breath and nodded. “Then you’ll have to keep them,” she said to Peter. She removed the harness from her shoulder and placed it in Peter’s open hand. She was surprised at how much it pained her to voluntarily give up the books.
“If you’re in trouble, just cry out,” Peter said, putting the books over his shoulder. “I’ll come get you.”
Scrivener Behn watched from the doorway with some measure of confusion. “You trust this boy?” he asked her.
Sophie nodded. “With my life.” As soon as she said the words, she knew they were true. She looked down, blushing, grateful that Peter couldn’t see her face.
“Worry not, Behn,” Saint Martin chimed in, folding his arms across his brawny chest. “If the brat tries to make a run for it, I’ll squash him flat.”
Sophie parted from Peter and Taro, following the scrivener through a narrow door in the back of the galley. Akrasia was at her side, her chain trailing behind her like a second tail. Sophie was grateful to have the tigress with her but fearful of what it might mean for Scrivener Behn.
The door led directly to the base of the lighthouse that shone over the entire structure—the same light that had guided them through the fog. Though the buildings had been lashed together with ropes, between their doorways was a shifting gap at her feet through which Sophie could see the river rushing beneath her. The sight made her stomach turn in on itself. “Courage, my cub,” Akrasia said, moving beside her. “We are too close to our goal to be slowed by such a thing as fear.”
Sophie stepped over the threshold and into the lighthouse. The narrow, circular stairs creaked under her feet as the tower bobbed and tilted on the river’s current. Stacks of unbound papers covered the steps, leaving very little room to walk. Akrasia followed closely behind, her gold chain rattling against the risers as she
climbed.
“I suspected someone might be coming to this lighthouse,” Scrivener Behn called back to them as he mounted the stairs. “For many years, I have watched closely the location of the remaining Questions using The Book of Where. Your Book of Who had been missing for some years, to only very recently appear in Bustleburgh.”
“It was hidden in the library of a man named Professor Cake,” Sophie called. She wondered if she was breaking some sort of rule by speaking of the Professor to another person. “He’s the one who charged me to collect the Four Questions.”
Scrivener Behn paused, swaying slightly with the rocking motion of the lighthouse. “Professor Cake?” He shook his head. “I should have known that the Professor might be involved in this somehow.”
“So you know him?” Sophie said, resuming her ascent.
Scrivener Behn waved a hand in a vague manner, as though trying to grasp the ungraspable. “I have not had the honor. But a man in my trade cannot help but hear rumors of he who moves behind the stories. If you are all here at the Professor’s urging, then we can be assured that this quest is not in vain—nor is it simply about collecting lost books. There are dark things on the horizon.”
“Pyre Day,” Sophie said. “Bustleburgh is collecting every storybook in the hinterlands and is planning to burn them all in a big ceremony.”
“That may be true,” he said. “But they will not burn all the stories.”
Sophie looked at the stacks of papers lining the stairs—some nearly as high as her knees—all covered with cramped handwriting. She picked up one of the fallen pages, which contained a handwritten account of a fable called “The Old Man and the Tree.” “Did you write this?” she asked.
“Only in the most literal sense,” Behn called back. “I am merely a scrivener, transcribing the stories others tell me. Though I have been forced to take on other roles in recent years—binding, mending, and then there’s the lighthouse.”
Sophie reached the top of the stairs, which opened onto the deck of the lighthouse. The space had been converted into a sort of book-bindery. Pots of ink and discarded quills and loose pages perched on every surface. Stacks of books and paper covered the floor in haphazard piles. Sagging bookshelves were filled with crudely stitched volumes whose spines bore their titles. Some titles she could read; others were in languages unknown to her. Sophie had never lived near the ocean and was largely unfamiliar with lighthouses. She had read enough to know that they usually employed oil or wood to keep a flame lit. This lighthouse, however, did not use oil or wood—instead, it contained a flickering cloud of little pale lights that darted in all directions.
“They’re sprites,” Sophie said. “There must be hundreds of them.” In fact, there were thousands. The creatures were so thick in the air that Sophie nearly had to cover her eyes. The lighthouse walls were encircled with tall, open windows, and the rafters were coated in a dark, glittering moss with tiny white mushrooms sprouting up. “This was the light that guided us here,” she said.
“You and many others,” Behn said, putting away his pen and sheaf of paper. “I had not meant for this lighthouse to become a refuge. I had, in fact, wanted to keep it hidden. But The Book of Where had another plan for me, it would seem.” He smiled and Sophie recognized on his face a sort of fondess similar to what she felt for The Book of Who. “Over the years, the lighthouse has drawn many wayward pilgrims, all of them driven from their homelands. It is a tolerable arrangement.” He held out one hand, and a sprite landed on the edge of his thumb, the pale glow reflecting brightly in his eyes. “I once roamed the map in search of stories, and now the stories come to me.”
Sophie looked at the tiny letters covering Scrivener Behn’s long fingers—so dense they made his skin appear black in the dim light. “Those words on your hands and face,” she said. “What are they?”
“Not just my hands and face.” Scrivener Behn pulled up his sleeve to reveal that the marks covered his entire arm and presumably the rest of his torso. “These are not words, but letters from different alphabets—a thousand scattered tongues writ upon my flesh. They are a spell. Any person who speaks one of these tongues will understand and be understood. It is a helpful thing in my trade.”
“That’s how you could talk to the cyanese twin,” Sophie said.
“And yourself,” he added. “My own native language is not spoken in the hinterlands. I grew up speaking the sand tongue from the Scarabian Peninsula. It is the language of an ancient country, many thousands of miles from this place.”
The lighthouse rocked to one side, sending Sophie and Akrasia into a wall. “What fool chooses to build a village on the water?” Akrasia said, growling. It was clear she did not approve of the decision, for she had been pacing nervously ever since setting foot on the docks.
“I did not choose to live at the mouth of the Uncannyon,” Behn said, his face bathed in the sprite-light. “It is The Book of Where that told me to settle here. And so I obeyed.”
“The Uncannyon.” Sophie recalled that Liesel had also used that word. “Is that what you call the abyss beyond the ridge?”
“It is rather more than an abyss,” he said. “An abyss is simply a large pit, which is something we can all imagine, but the Uncannyon is something beyond imagination. The Uncannyon is the unknown frontier that lurks beyond the edge of perception. Its depths cannot be plumbed or even comprehended. The Uncannyon swallows anything or anyone that enters it—nothing escapes from its grasp.”
Sophie had read her share of stories in which heroes ventured into what was fondly referred to as “the unknown.” In those stories, “the unknown” usually ended up being a land or country that was in fact very well known by its previous or current inhabitants. But this thing that Behn spoke of—this infinite darkness—seemed altogether different. “When I asked The Book of Who about you, it couldn’t give your location. Was that because of the Uncannyon?”
He nodded. “I needed to hide The Book of Where someplace where even the other books could not find it.” He opened a drawer in his workbench and removed a book with an orange cover. “It seems my time of hiding is at an end.”
He gave the book to Sophie, who took it in her open hands. The book was damaged from years of neglect. It was clear that Scrivener Behn was many things, but a bookmender he was not. She unlatched the clasp and opened the cover to the title page, which was written in orange ink. For a moment, she was confused, for the title was in a language she could not read, but then the letters shifted into more familiar words:
“The title just changed into my language,” she said. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you are the book’s new guardian,” he said, drawing his inscribed fingers over his inscribed scalp. “It means that my long work is finally done.” His face bore an expression of both sadness and relief.
Sophie held the open book in her hands. At last, she had the one book that could point her to the location of the final volume. “Where is The Book of When?” she asked. The pages came alive, flipping first in one direction and then the other. At last, the book closed itself.
“It didn’t answer my question,” she said, looking up at Behn.
The scrivener moved closer. “I will admit that this puzzles me. Until very recently, I knew The Book of When to be in Bustleburgh. It must have changed location—gone someplace even this book cannot find.” He stroked his long beard. “Curious indeed.”
“Enough with these riddles.” Akrasia moved in front of Sophie. “You have given the girl her book, and now it is time to give me what I deserve.” She bared her teeth. “Vengeance for the life you stole.”
Scrivener Behn did not seem to quaver but met her yellow gaze. “We have both been prisoners, Akrasia. You in your library, I in my lighthouse.” If he was frightened by the prospect of being killed, it did not show. “My blood will not give you back your mistress or your lost years. All I can offer is my story, and perhaps it will allow you to see that the things I have done, I have done for a
greater purpose.”
“Please,” Sophie whispered to the beast. “I didn’t just come here for a book. I came here to learn the truth about my mother. Don’t rob me of that. Not when I’m so close.”
Akrasia remained where she was, her entire body tensed like a coil. “Tell your story, Scrivener,” she said, growling. “And know that you are speaking for your very life.”
Scrivener Behn would not be the first person in history whose life depended on his ability to tell a story. If you ever find yourself in such an unfortunate position, know that the truth of your words matters much more than the tone of your voice. Behn seemed to understand this, and when he began speaking, it was not with oratory flair but with stilted, cautious words. “I can tell you well what I recall from the night your mistress died, for I was with her when it happened. Not a day goes by when I do not recall her death with sorrow.”
Scrivener Behn took a deep breath, releasing a trembling sigh. “It happened during what would turn out to be our last Evensong. Do you know this word?”
Sophie recalled what Akrasia had told her. “It is the ceremony where the four Storyguard meet and summon magic into the world.”
“The details for the next Evensong were always decided by consulting the Four Questions. The Book of Where would tell us the location. The date was given by The Book of When, the subject of the recitation decided by The Book of What. And The Book of Who dictated who should perform the recitation.
“Per the books’ instruction, this upcoming Evensong was set to be held in Bustleburgh—a place we already knew, for the hinterlands was home to one of our members. As the foretold date approached, the Storyguard all made their way to the city. Your mother arrived early so that she might offer her mending services to the local population. It was during that time that she met and married your father. You were born soon after.
Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard Page 22
