by A J Hackwith
Easy to do, as it wasn’t ending anytime soon. Brevity’s arms swam through the not-stone, trying to find some purchase to slow her descent, but there was nothing there. She was falling through the nothing underside of a realm. At least the oubliette had been a place. She had made a horrible mistake.
If anything, that thought increased her fall speed. It took a surprising moment to realize when the stone faded away entirely. A shot of wind, so cold it seared her skin, startled her to her senses. She fell through a cavernous space, but it felt solidly real. Brevity was suddenly not in the liminal underside of Hell but somewhere. Somewhere hidden deep in the foundations. And, to her shock, she wasn’t alone.
Tiny black flecks roiled and frothed over the walls of the cavern in an infestation. It took another two minutes of falling to recognize those flecks were not insects but demons. Ranks of figures seethed along the walls of the cavern. Brevity had always known, technically, that Hell had armies. Malphas was a general after all. But to see it was something different. All of Hell’s legions littered the staging ground of the giant space. Along one edge, coils of what Brevity first had mistaken for borders resolved into scales as things came into view. Wyrms, like the snakelike monster that Andras had rampaged into the Library with, writhed in frenzied nests. Dozens—hundreds?—of them.
Brevity let out a gasp. She was still falling, rushing through the air so impossibly high above the cavern floor that none of the demons should have heard her. But there was a single figure at a dais in the center of the space that jerked her head up.
Malphas.
“What are you doing out of your cage, little mouse?”
The voice was sinuous and purring inside Brevity’s head. Below, Malphas barked an order and a trio of winged lieutenants shoved off the ground. Brevity’s heart leapt into her throat, but she was still falling toward the dark cavern floor below.
. . . Dark cavern floor.
There was no time to think it through. The space was huge, but that made the shadows cast by the lights below long and deep. They jumped up to meet her as Brevity reached out and threw herself into a step through the shadows.
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
Brevity skidded through the shadows and into the light. She had just enough time to register a whirl of wood shelves and bright colors before she collided with something large and meaty. Said large, meaty thing said, “Ooof.”
At some point during the panic, Brevity had screwed her eyes shut, and now it took a concerted effort to open them. The world resolved into the whirling red eyes and hideous face of Death itself, and she’d never been so relieved to see it. “Walter? It’s . . .”
She wanted to ask if it was really him, if the jumbled clutter around them—it appeared Walter had caught her a second before she would have careened into a shelf of glass jars—was really the transport office. If she was really safe. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“Miss Brev! What’re you doin’ blinking all willy-nill— Oh hey, shh there.” Walter juggled her around in his arms until he could set her on the edge of a stool that was near the office counter. As the counter was made for Walter, Brevity’s head barely came level with the wood top. “There, now. Easy does it. Yer shaking like a wee pup.”
Was she? Brevity looked down with blank confusion at the tremors shivering through her hands. She was still staring at them when a giant-sized jacket dropped around her shoulders and Walter pressed a sloshing mug half-filled with hot liquid in her hands. “You look a fright, Miss Brevity, if you don’t mind me saying.”
The liquid in the mug wasn’t dark enough to be tea. Brevity took a numb sip. Walter looked embarrassed. “I don’t got anything proper like Miss Claire’s tea, so I just heated some water quick. I heard hot things are comforting to mortals. Not that you’re a mortal! I don’t mean to—oh!”
To her own surprise, Brevity fell forward, mug and all, and began to sob. Walter caught her against his chest and patted her back awkwardly with a hand the size of a dinner plate. “I’m sorry, I always go an’ say the wrong thing—”
“Walter, you . . .” Brevity sniffed against the rough fabric of his cobbled-together suit jacket. The mug was trapped between them and sloshed a wet spot on Walter’s delightfully ugly tie. “You are the only right thing that happened today.”
“There, there . . .” Walter eased her back to scrutinize her. Walter’s face was not made for concern, and his bulbous features took on a constipated look. “What got you in such a state?”
The question welled tears in Brevity’s eyes again. But before she could speak, an army of footsteps thundered down the steps to the transport office. Walter flailed as much as Brevity did, and somehow she ended up clutched to his chest like a shield as the gentle giant peered over her shoulder.
The first thing that emerged from the gloom of the stairwell was the glint of a blade. It was joined by a gun barrel, and then a thornbush of other weapons. The figures that crowded into the transport office’s cramped space were bristling with weapons and fury. Walter was being invaded, and the force was incredibly hostile.
“You will take us to Hell’s court, or else.”
Brevity had been busy preparing to reach for a shadow again, but she stopped at the familiar ghostly lilt of that voice. “Rosia?”
“Librarian?” Rosia’s impish face rose over the sights of a positively monstrous blunderbuss gun. The other damsels were equally armed. Brevity hadn’t even been aware that the damsel suite contained such an arsenal, but here they were, fitted for war. And there, at the back, lighting the curls of the tops of the damsels’ heads with holy fire, was a very familiar sword.
“Rami!” Brevity was too exhausted to be embarrassed that her face grew hot with tears again; to be embarrassed that Walter held her or that she half jumped, half crawled her way out of his arms and across the counter and landed on the other side with a thud, all while making quite pathetic sobbing sounds. She had been scared and had to pretend to be brave for so long and she had been so, so scared. She didn’t care how she looked; she had made it home.
Rami, to his credit, immediately had his sword sheathed and stepped forward. He barely managed to catch Brevity as she plowed between the damsels and caught her in a hug. This one wasn’t awkward, not like hugging Walter; this one was large and all-encompassing and safe, and oh, how very good it was to have an angel as a hugging friend. Brevity buried her face in his feathers.
“We couldn’t find you,” Rosia was saying calmly. The damsels appeared to be less bloodthirsty now that they’d found Brevity. They’d stopped pointing their weapons at Walter—Death! They’d been willing to fight Death? Brevity squelched a hysterical giggle—and they’d gathered around Brevity and Rami like a protective swarm. “We looked everywhere. We cannot lose our librarian. It is against the rules.”
“I knew Hell had to be involved,” Rami explained softly. His voice was a rumble through his chest under Brevity’s chin. “I was going to come alone, but the ladies would not hear of it.”
“She is our librarian,” Rosia said simply.
Theirs. Brevity had people. People who would notice when she was gone, who would go looking for her, even to the point of challenging Hell itself, to make sure she was okay. The tears choked her again and Brevity covered her face with both hands.
“Hey. You’re safe. You went ahead and saved yourself and you’re safe now, shhh.” Rami was right there, pulling her arms gently down. He wrapped her up in a hug again, safe and undemanding. “We were coming for you. We’ll always come for you. You’re home now.”
And Brevity believed him.
25
CLAIRE
I would have thought that death would rid us of this classist buggery that humans are obsessed with.
I thought wrong.
Librarian Fleur Michel, 1733 CE
Not being a condemned soul
had its benefits. Freeing Bjorn to travel to Hell appeared to be a simple matter of him throwing open the door to the hall, settling up his tab at the bar—which appeared to consist entirely of favors and gossip—and, finally, giving up his place in the drum circle. They sent him off with a new fur cloak and a small keg of something potent. Valhalla seemed earnestly sad to see Bjorn go, and Claire managed to feel only a mild stab of envy at that observation.
A feathered riot greeted them as they exited the longhouse. The air was thick with ravens, wheeling and cursing in a frenzy. Claire clamped her hands over her ears and quickly located the focus of their ire. At the apex of the roof, one black bird, fatter and scruffier than the rest by far, roosted with a smug kind of calm.
“Bird,” Claire grumbled.
“I confess I half expected your pet to abandon us here, myself.” Hero’s cheer diminished slightly when a questionable fluff of feathers and detritus caught on his hair. He had to duck to avoid the flight path of a particularly upset raven.
“That . . .” Bjorn said, flapping his hands irritably. He had to raise his voice over the screeching. “That is your transportation?”
“Our transportation,” Claire corrected. Bird had begun industriously ripping at the bone-and-gristle wind chimes the ravens preferred. A knucklebone plinked at her feet and down the flight of steps. “Assuming Arlid’s folk don’t kill her first. What is the issue?”
Bird managed to rain down a whole section of trophies. Claire ducked back under the arches to avoid a particularly large string of jawbones, but a blur of feathers and teeth intercepted it. There was a jarring crunch as something hit the stairs.
“Traitors! Deviant!” A raven woman, indigo-black hair feathered into a Mohawk nearly as impressive as her eyeliner, rose from where she landed. She had the string of jawbones in one fist, which she shook like evidence at a trial. “Honorless scabs!”
“Hello to you as well, Arlid,” Claire replied placidly.
“You.” Arlid pointed her finger with an extraordinary amount of accusation. Arlid was prickly in the best of circumstances, but they appeared to have done something that genuinely aggrieved the raven guard. “I knew Valhalla should have fed you to the flock from the first.”
“Then you’ll be pleased to hear that we are now leaving and I doubt we’ll have much cause to return to this realm again,” Claire said evenly. “Now, if you’ll just return us our bird and let us be on our way—”
“You brought the traitor here?” That appeared to be all the spark Arlid needed to start up again. “Cowards! Milk drinker! Foul cheats!”
“Don’t you mean ‘fowl’?” Hero muttered under his breath.
Claire was usually immune to Hero’s remarks, but it took some effort to suppress that one. She pursed her lips rather than smile. She exchanged looks with Bjorn, who just shrugged. The old man appeared entirely content to let Arlid verbally abuse Claire to her heart’s content. Claire sighed. “I had wondered if Bird was one of yours.”
“No.” Arlid’s kohled eyes narrowed and she clattered the jawbones against Claire’s chest to emphasize the point. “That traitor is not one of ours. We exiled her, cast her out from the flock for her crimes.” Her voice rose to a screech again. “Honorless!”
Even Arlid’s human voice took on a cawing tenor when she was worked up. Claire winced and held up a hand. Bird appeared to take this as the signal to descend from her perch and land on Claire’s shoulder with enough weight to make her stumble. It was, of course, the worst possible time for Claire to say, “I have no place nor allegiance in flock politics, as you continually remind me.”
“If that were true,” Arlid said, kohled eyes suddenly narrowing as she stepped back, “then you would have no problem handing over the traitor.”
“I thought you said Bird was outcast.”
“Yes, and the price for returning from an exile unforgiven is unpleasant.” Arlid’s smile was composed of sharp points and grudges. “Very unpleasant. Give her over to us, book people, and we will ferry you back to your realm.”
If Bird was aware her future was being bartered, she didn’t act like it. Her claws stabbed through Claire’s thin shirt and her beak idly plucked and yanked through her hair as if looking for crumbs.
Hero tilted his head. “Tempting.”
Claire couldn’t deny it was. It wasn’t as if Bird had ever shown any fondness for or fidelity to the rest of the Library. Claire had merely inherited one loud, messy, ill-tempered raven along with the rest of the Arcane Wing. It shrieked and bit and clawed and only halfway minded Claire when she had a biscuit in her hand. The idea of being able to return to a crumbless desk, to leave papers out without fear of torn and pecked edges, had definite appeal.
But then again, there was no returning to her desk. Her desk, her papers, any remaining place she’d had at all, had burned up with the rest of the Arcane Wing. Claire took responsibility for every artifact they’d lost, every way she’d let Malphas prove just how unsuitable Claire was for the job. All that remained of the Arcane Wing was Claire, Rami, and a dagger containing a demon.
And one very unlikable raven.
“Why hasn’t she changed, like you do?” Claire gestured vaguely at Arlid’s wicked human form.
“Because she can’t. Not without the flock’s forgiveness,” Arlid said. “We do not forgive traitors, cowards, weak things. Will you hand her over?”
“I wish I could,” Claire said ruefully. “You haven’t even started in on the number of names I call this creature.” Bird made a stab at her hair again, and Claire shrugged her off hard enough to unsettle the claws digging into her collarbone as Bird fluttered into the air. “I have no doubt she’s just as terrible as you say and deserving of every unpleasant fate.”
Arlid nodded. “Her crimes—”
“Are unimportant to me,” Claire interrupted shortly. She raised her chin. “You say this dratted creature is an outcast. You say she’s worthy of punishment and done the unthinkable. You say she’s without home or honor. Is that correct?”
Arlid could smell a trap when one was nearby. Her expression turned sour even as she nodded slowly in agreement.
“Then I say that sounds like just one thing: mine.” It was nonsense, it was stupid, it was absolutely picking a fight for no goddamned reason, but all that just sent a vicious thrill up her spine as Claire smiled. All teeth. She clicked her tongue, and for once Bird was biddable enough to sweep down and return to her shoulder. Her weight really was monstrous. “Hell—no, the Library—claims this horrible oversized and terrible goose as its own. Bird belongs to the Arcane Wing, what’s left of it. We’ll be taking her back with us, as is our right.”
The ravens overhead had fallen strangely silent, and behind Arlid two more women dropped into being with a quiet rush of feathers. Arlid didn’t look at her backup; she looked at Claire, long and hard. “We came to your aid when you needed it, ink girl. You would throw that away for a beast?”
“No,” Claire said. “I have few allies in the world. I cherish the ones I have.”
The point of Arlid’s chin inched up, a pleased kind of justice. But Claire wasn’t done.
“But an alliance that is based on rage and hate will eventually fail. It took me losing what I loved, twice, to understand that. We do not trade lives. Not anymore. I can’t be your ally on this, Arlid. But I would like to still consider myself your friend. Hero?” Claire was relieved to hear the quick ring of a blade sliding free from its scabbard behind her. She smiled. “We’re leaving now.”
It was difficult to turn on your heel with the weight of a very large bird digging into your shoulder, but Claire managed to not stumble. She picked a random direction away from the longhouse and started walking, trusting Hero and Bjorn to follow. It was a long, tense moment when all she could hear was the grass crunching beneath her feet and the disgruntled click of Bird’s beak in her ear. She half expected a
counterattack, a raven or dagger in her back to take her down. But eventually only the sound of two sets of feet fell in behind her.
The lighter step lingered until they were clear of the rise, then sped up. Hero pulled up next to her with his sword resting jauntily against his shoulder. “Well, that was bracing.”
“Don’t start.”
“I had no idea you were such a sentimental animal lover, Claire.”
“I didn’t—” Claire stopped in the middle of a denial and released a long sigh. Because she was never going to hear the end of it now. She shrugged Bird off her shoulder, and the raven gave only a mild cuss before launching itself in the air. “She is simply our ride home. I was being practical.”
“Yes, practical.” The corner of Hero’s mouth quirked up in that irritating and irresistible way he had. “Any humanity is merely a coincidence. Funny how that always works out for you.”
Claire refused to deign to respond. She cleared her throat. “Home, Bird. If you please.”
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
“You should have told me it was your first time traveling the raven roads,” Claire chided as she guided Bjorn’s head between his knees. “I would have thought you had used them hundreds of times.”
“Not all of us go gadding about like a mayfly,” Bjorn mumbled, still wiping viscous bits from his beard. They’d arrived near the gargoyle, which Bjorn had promptly emptied the contents of his stomach onto. Claire still wasn’t sure whether to blame the raven road or the gargoyle’s disconcerting multidimensional nature. Bird had taken it as a personal offense and fled with a grackle of cussing.
Hero, ever fastidious, made the quick excuse to go acquire a towel. It was a pleasant surprise when he actually bothered to return, bringing towels and Brevity with him. “Bjorn! Oh hey, wow . . . I didn’t know we could do that.” Brevity took the towels from Hero and distributed one to the Viking and the gargoyle.
