by A J Hackwith
Claire stood, a silhouette in the doorway, struck into stillness by the sight. Had to be, or she would have seen the movement to one side as a wraith-like imp peeled itself from the shadows. Hero crossed blades in time to divert the demon that had targeted Claire. The shuffle of metal on metal brought her back to her senses, and Claire whipped around. Hero dispatched the snarling creature with a twist of his wrist. It felt less satisfactory when enemies just collapsed into shadow. Bad sports.
She had hollow eyes and hunger-pang cheeks, already grieving. He had just enough time to see the way the fire lit up Claire’s blank, determined misery before she ran through the Arcane Wing’s double doors and disappeared among the flames.
Hero made a half step after her, but something deep inside him ground to a halt when the heat hit his face. Maybe some part of him still remembered being fragile paper and ink, the part of him that locked his knees and that swam his mind when he tried to force himself forward. The rabbit pulse in his chest nearly drowned out the distant voice in his head that told him Claire was in danger, Claire needed help. Hero needed to go, he needed to just go. Hero . . . He called himself Hero, what good was it for if not . . .
“Hero.” Hero blinked and Rami’s wide shadow fell over him, blocking the flames. “I’ll go.” The fire and shadows made it hard to read Rami’s expression, but from the gravel in his tone it was obvious Rami had grasped Hero’s fear in a glance. His fear, his failing. “Stay here—help Brevity.”
Hero dimly became aware that everyone had caught up and there was now a small huddle of horrified damsels at the base of the stairs. At its center, Brevity stood, rigid and lifeless, her skin so pale it had almost lost its blue entirely. Her temples were glittering with sweat, and she was breathing with hard, forced breaths.
Hero wasn’t the only one who held the memory of fire in the wounded parts of their soul.
He forced himself to nod, anchoring himself on the determined look in Rami’s eyes. “Go. Be . . . be careful.” His voice sounded weak to his own ears, hollow and frail. Like paper. Like all things that burned. He loathed himself in that moment, but a soft thing crept onto Rami’s face. He nodded once, squeezed Hero’s hand, and was gone.
His movements were mechanical as he put an arm around Brevity’s shoulders. Her breathing hitched into a question he didn’t hear. He said something reassuring, reassuring and meaningless and forgotten as soon as it left his empty lips. He gripped his sword tighter in his free hand, but no targets thoughtfully presented themselves. And Hero waited for the two parts of his heart to emerge from the flames.
9
RAMI
There’s a cleansing element to fire. It’s terrible—no one wants to see it lay waste to their lives—but it’s a purifying ritual, walking through fire. You come out the other side burned and scoured. You come out the other side, knowing what is needed to grow anew.
Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 608 CE
Contrary to popular imagination, angels were at home in fire. Indeed, Heaven was just as flame-filled as Hell, though Rami would grant it smelled better. Righteous fire burned clear and sharp, like good incense. It didn’t clot the throat with thick, anise-oily smoke that seemed to wrap around your eyes like a blind.
But Rami had no fear of fire. So that could not be the reason he was terrified. Could not be the reason his pulse sped up and his muscles cramped with adrenaline as he crashed between two tables that had already tumbled to glowing matchsticks. It couldn’t be what clenched around his throat like a fist, making it hard to yell over the crackling inferno for Claire.
“Here.” The reply was muddled, made distant by the roar and crack of burning wood. Rami unsheathed his sword and used it to impatiently lever back the wreckage of a fallen shelf. Things were snapping under his feet. Bones and crowns, seeds and skin, pearls and flutes. The dormant relics of the Arcane Wing snapped and charred around him. And what could not burn began to scream. It was a miracle he could still see, that he and Claire weren’t both immediately suffocated by the roil of smoke and heat. The Arcane Wing must have been venting the worst of it somehow. Trying to save itself and its charges even now.
It was losing the fight. But if a wing mirrored its caretaker, it would never stop trying.
He shoved and hacked his way down the far side of the wing and found Claire, wrestling with a hunk of burning shelving. The ripped skirts she used to protect her hands were already charred at the edges. Her hands were already seared and tender.
His impulse was to grab her by the arms, haul her away from the fragile realm turning to ash around them. But that was not the duty he had.
“Back!” Miraculously, Claire heard him and gave him enough room to cleave the wood with his blade. The smaller bits of the shelving crumbled, and Rami realized it had been blocking the opening to the cluttered little alcove Claire had claimed for her desk. She dashed forward before the debris had even settled. Rami lunged forward as part of the archway began to give. He shoved it up with his shoulder and winced as the heat began to eat through his feathered coat. “We have to leave!”
“Not yet.” Claire’s hands worked swiftly across the shelves crammed over the desk, deftly snatching the important books into a pile. Ash was in her braids and sweat cut hairline fractures through the soot on her face. She couldn’t stop coughing. “Grab a box and start pack—”
A fantastic crack like thunder cut off her words. Rami glanced behind him just in time to see an arched beam sag down from the ceiling, descending like some slain beast as it crashed into the far shelves. He felt the vibration through the floorboards.
Rami placed a hand on her shoulder. “Claire.” She didn’t look at him. “We can’t save them.”
A shudder ran through her collarbone and then was ruthlessly suppressed. Smoke clotted the alcove by now, and even Rami was finding it difficult to breathe. He sensed, more than saw, her straighten and sweep the odds and ends of baubles on the desk—whatever happened to have been up for inspection that morning—into her arms. “We—” She wheezed. “We can try.”
“Claire!” She was fighting with the bottom drawer of her desk. Her hair was in her face, one of the braids perilously close to the flames. Rami’s patience broke. He manhandled an arm around her waist in a way that he hoped she would forgive later. She worked the drawer free just as he hauled her back, and came away with one more bundle in her hand.
Rami didn’t wait to see what was worth burning over. The smoke was thick as night now, descending and stealing each breath they took. He dragged her back just as the framework of the alcove gave way. Claire’s desk disappeared in a bloom of embers and falling debris.
Claire didn’t fight him as he dragged her into the corridor. The world had turned to soot and rage around them. It was amazing how fire could turn from searing to impenetrable black at a critical point. Rami was forced to ignite his blade to keep them upright. Even the floorboards cracked and splintered beneath them now. The Arcane Wing had lost the fight and was folding up around the corpses of its artifacts. What it couldn’t protect it would entomb.
Just a little longer, please. Hold out just a minute more. Rami prayed, and he wasn’t sure exactly to whom. They clawed blindly back to the front tables by memory. The air was a vacuum of smoke in his lungs. With the last of his senses, Rami heaved them through the flames where the doors should have been.
There was a confusing moment that muddled into a watercolor of sensations. The roar of a void at his back, and a gust of cold, mercifully cold, air slamming him in the face, followed by cool floorboards as Rami’s legs gave out. Noise and touch whirled into an eddy before he was able to anchor himself on cool fingertips touching his cheek. He centered on stunning green eyes that were furious and a little wet and wobbly.
“I—” Rami gagged on the soot in his mouth. Hmm, he had never vomited before. Not in all his years. That would be a new experience—but he was able to swallow after
a moment. “I was . . . careful.”
Hero made a broken sound, half laughter and half relief, that ended with an angry shove. “You absolute idiot. Idiots,” he corrected, looking over Rami’s head. It took effort to turn over.
Claire lay like a broken toy sprawled across the floor, a sight that made Rami’s throat clench worse than the smoke had. But her head was turning and she let out a violent cough that was strong enough to reassure him that the woman was too stubborn to die a second time. Around her, bits of rescued artifacts scattered the floor like stars, still smoking from their fall.
Clutched in her hand, nearly welded to her seared fingers, was a dagger. A dagger set with a tiger-stripe stone and a blade that seemed malicious. And awake.
10
BREVITY
Revka says I’m selfish, selfish in this quest to free the Unwritten Wing from its shackles. She’s right, but it’s so much worse than she knows. I’m not selfishly willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of my goals. It’s much worse than that. I’m selfish enough to want it all, and to lose nothing.
If there’s a shred of humanity left in me, after so many years down here, it’s that. I almost had it; I almost had it. Then Malphas threatened Revka, and I never even got so far as to speak to Lucifer.
It’s true: I’m selfish.
Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE
“Claire.” Rami’s voice sounded rougher than normal, as if the anchor stone of his calm was beginning to fracture. Hero gripped him a little tighter as he struggled to sit up. “Ma’am. Please reassure me that we did not nearly burn ourselves to oblivion in order to save a traitor’s soul from the flames.”
Claire gripped the dagger in her hand tighter, and Brevity knew when she finally released it there would be a burn imprinted in her palm. Really, Hero was the only one around here who was supposed to scar himself up. She got an elbow underneath herself and raised her chin in precisely the manner that told Brevity exactly how guilty she felt. Behind her the assembled damsels shifted uneasily. Some began filing out of the room, like smarter creatures smelling a storm on the horizon. “It was my duty as Arcanist to rescue whatever artifacts I could.”
“Artifacts, not prisoners.” Rami recovered his strength quickly. He stood, gently shaking off Hero’s offered arm. The feathers under the epaulets of his trench coat were singed, some burnt back terribly. He began brushing himself off—which only managed to smear the soot around. He didn’t seem to notice behind the thunderhead of judgment building in his eyes. “I saw you in there. You went right for that drawer. You risked everything to save that dagger.”
Claire couldn’t match Rami for pure supernatural stamina and recovery, so she settled her filthy skirts around her as if she were at a picnic rather than on the ash-covered floor of what had been the entrance to the Arcane Wing. “Your opinion is duly noted, apprentice.”
“My opinion,” Rami seethed, “is we should have left that thing to burn in Hell where it belongs and saved something more worthy. Are you aware we just lost the entire wing?”
Claire’s shoulders twitched once. She studied the dagger and her folded hands in her lap. “I am aware.”
The air in the room had simultaneously dropped several degrees and still managed to boil. Hero had a frozen look on his face—no help there. Brevity coughed and jumped forward, opening her mouth and praying something good fell out. “That’s not anyone’s fault, right? Why are we yelling at each other instead of Malphas?”
“Because some of us are too new here to have learned that this is Hell,” Claire said calmly. “Justice is not in the cards. We don’t get to choose who gets saved.”
“Don’t. . . . Don’t lecture me on Hell, Claire. I’ve known more demons than you ever will.” Rami bit his lip, appearing to try to get his temper under control. Brevity would have been fascinated if she hadn’t been so drained by terror; Rami was always the calm one, never angry, not since he’d joined them. He breathed once through his nose, then picked up and stowed his sword. “I will see all of them burn for this.” He flicked a look down to Claire’s lap and up again. “All of them.” Rami strode back up the stairs the way they’d come.
Brevity half expected Hero to follow him. Instead, he crossed over to drop to one knee next to Claire. “Hands,” he demanded flatly.
Claire startled and started to turn away with a sniff. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“Hands, Claire.” Hero stopped her by her shoulders but declined to do more than that. “You can drive off Rami with your monstrous side, but not me.”
“Because, as they say, it takes one to know one?”
Hero’s mouth curved up at the side. “Just as you say. So from one monster to another, show me your hands, warden.”
Claire relented with the grace of a sullen toddler. When she turned over her hands—one still gripping the dagger—Brevity let out a gasp. “Claire!”
“It’s not as bad as all that,” Claire tutted. “Don’t make such a fu—” She let out a hiss as Hero gently peeled her fingers from the handle. “Peeled,” here, being the correct term, as some skin appeared to remain behind, seared in painful bits and drabs to the heated metal. Claire’s palms were red from the fire, but her right hand, which had held the dagger, was positively raw.
“I have never understood how, for a dead woman, you injure yourself so easily in the afterlife.” His hands were gentler than his words, turning her palms and taking care not to touch the exposed burns.
“We can’t all be fast-healing characters from books.” It must have still hurt, because a sensible Claire would have noticed the way Hero winced at that. Claire’s face was a paler shade of brown than normal. “And it’s Hell: they can’t let me off easy. I’ll be fine in a few hours. It may not be a real physical body, but it’s amazing what inconvenient physics your mind can convince you of.”
“I’ll go find some bandages,” Brevity volunteered. She paused at the base of the stairs. “Hero, you’ll . . . ?”
“Any demons that come back to check on their handiwork will be a welcome excuse to work out my frustrations.” Hero sighed and stood to readjust the sword at his hip. “We’ll wait right here. Ma’am.”
That last part was Hero’s way of trying to soften his words. He did that more often lately. Had more soft bits, as if his time with Rami and Claire were wearing down the more barbed parts of his defenses. Brevity nodded and took the stairs two at a time.
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
She wasn’t entirely keen on the idea of running into Rami while he was still in a black mood, but the Unwritten Wing was the only reliable place for something as mundane as a first aid kit. She didn’t see him when she bustled past the front desk and found the neatly folded linens and thread Claire had kept in the bottom drawer for the more mortal kinds of repairs. She turned, arms full, and nearly tripped.
“Oh! Rosia, what are you doing?”
“Reading.” The small young damsel had no book in her hands.
“On the floor? Under my desk?” Brevity crouched down to pick up a linen she’d dropped. Rosia lay under the librarian’s desk, knees neatly pulled up. It wasn’t the oddest place that Brevity had found the girl, not since she had sunk into the unwritten ink and emerged again without her book. Brevity would have said it was impossible for a character to survive without their book if Hero hadn’t just pulled the same miracle. Now both of them, Rosia and Hero, had a somewhat honored and entirely unique status in the Unwritten Wing. No longer books, but still a part of it. Hero wanted nothing to do with the damsel suite, so Rosia had inexplicably become their eccentric leader.
“I can read anywhere now,” Rosia explained simply.
Brevity squinted but could see no writing anywhere on the underside of the desk. She suspected further inquiry along that line would not be helpful anyway. She straightened back up. “Well, there’s been . . . an accident, a
t the Arcane Wing. I’m going to take these to Claire. I’ll be right—”
“We should take the shadow way,” Rosia interrupted.
“Oh, you’re coming? I mean, you’re welcome to come, I guess.” Brevity tried not to grimace. She could shadowstep around the Library—little in-between blinks that real muses could do for long distances. She’d been restricted to the Library, though it had still come in handy when she’d been evading Andras’s monsters during the standoff. Somehow, she’d been loath to use it much since then. There was no reason for Rosia to take such an interest.
“This way.” Rosia rolled to her feet and took Brevity’s hand—which required some swift juggling on Brevity’s part. “Don’t worry,” Rosia added over her shoulder as she led them out. “I like this next part.”
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
She hadn’t intended to eavesdrop. Not really. It was just that the gargoyle had been taking up space with its moping in the hallway, so Brevity had gotten impatient and—just as Rosia had suggested—used her shadowstep to get around him. Hell being Hell, it dumped her out in a side passage. It had taken her a moment to get her bearings, but it was easy enough to orient herself. She could return to Claire and Hero taking the roundabout, and she was nearly there when a raised voice made her pause.
“When do you plan to tell them, then?” Hero’s voice practically cooed with accusation. Brevity slowed, creeping up to the end of the hallway with an instinctive quiet. She frowned, only half hiding—honest—as she peered around the corner.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Claire still sat on the floor, cradling both her hand and the soul dagger in the folds of her skirt.
