by A J Hackwith
A sound like thunder nearly startled Hero out of his chair. It had everyone on their feet, thankfully, because the next tremor that shook through the Library crashed a tower of books across the conference table.
“Stay with the librarians.” Hero had already drawn his sword and loped toward the front doors, entirely negligent of the fact that he was a librarian. He disappeared for a moment, and it took all of Rami’s reserve to stand guard in front of the gathered scholars rather than chase after him. He reappeared, sword lowered and face perplexed, a moment later. “The hallway is clear.”
“No demons?” Rami asked cautiously.
“Not a one. Quiet as the grave out there. I interrupted the gargoyle’s nap. What’s going—” Hero’s question was interrupted by a sonorous creak followed by a crack that felt like it rent the earth. A cascade of sound followed as the floor shuddered: stacks of books hitting the floor, wood scrolls cracking and chipping, sheaves of loose parchment fluttering into the air like a froth of moth wings. Rami immediately looked to the floor, expecting a chasm to have split the very ground, demons crawling up from the depths of Hell. But the wood floorboards seemed intact, only venting lines of dust into the lamplight, shook loose from the slats.
It took time, a disturbance that large, to settle into silence in a space as big as the Library. The books had been stirred by the noise, and Rami saw a couple of heads peering out at them curiously from the far end of the stacks. The damsels would be sending a representative in no time—probably Lucille, Rami thought with a wince. The damsel’s elder matron was formidable enough to make even a Watcher quail.
Claire came skidding out of the stacks, Brevity behind her. “Status?” she yelled, but no one had an answer. Murmurs came from the librarians’ table until Bjorn’s voice cut them short.
“The fires are going out.” His voice was low but streaked with alarm that spread around the table.
Hero rejoined Rami, holding his sword out warily for lack of a clear target. “What fires?”
Tension inched through Bjorn’s old wiry shoulders, as if pulled by a wrench. His hand inched along his waistband looking for a weapon he’d long since discarded. Bjorn’s keen gaze met Rami’s. There was no humor in them now. “My fires. The dead fires.”
Hero breathed in a curse, and Rami flowed into action. A few steps took him down the nearest aisle, though he was slowed down by the debris of fallen books and dust-shivered vines. The campfires of the Unwon Wing had accompanied Bjorn along with its spirits and made all the librarians nervous until Brevity had managed to coax them into the shielded containers and lamps that dotted the intersecting paths of the shelves. The fall of shadow warned Rami before he even reached the first intersection: the sturdy copper brazier was out. Cold smoke still curled from the embers, casting a strange frosty anise scent on the air. Rami’s brow furrowed as he stepped forward.
The floorboards flexed like a sponge beneath his boot. Rami recoiled on instinct, and by the time he stepped forward again, his boot made a small wet splash. Beads of water, dark and oily, rolled off his toe to rejoin the thin puddle forming on the hardwood under his feet. In the dark, he couldn’t make out how far it spread, but he placed the cold smell now—water. Rami’s chest thudded. “Echo?”
The Unsaid Wing’s librarian and her mystical reflection pool were the only permissible source, and Rami dearly hoped this was the spirit playing jokes. If there was a worse enemy to libraries than fire, it was water. Fire burned, but water lingered, festering mold and rot with a reach farther than the flames’. If a fire raged a book to ashes, water inflicted the trauma of bloated corpses of stories long after the ground had dried.
The Library was a magical entity. Thankfully, the dead needed no water closets. It had no plumbing to speak of, except the niceties conjured by the damsels out of their own books. Even Claire’s beloved tea was steeped from a kettle that never emptied. There should be no real water in Hell.
An icy feeling nipped at his toes as the water penetrated the lining of his boots. There was definitely water in Hell. His toes were soaked through by the time he returned to the front lobby.
“There’s flooding.” His warning was unnecessary. The water only puddled in the seams of the floorboards here, but already the librarians were in action. The Duat librarian was hurriedly rolling up the unmade rugs, slinging them across any higher surface at hand. Brevity had marshaled several others to relocate the books and scrolls that had stacked up on the floor for lack of space. Hero had enlisted the gargoyle, who was attempting to lever one of the tall standing shelves up without spilling its inhabitants—unsuccessfully. It was an operation both efficient and pointless. The Library was an endless sprawl of shelves and stacks. The water would outpace any efforts. Even if it never reached the lowest shelf of the stacks, it would snatch hundreds of books from their hands.
At the eye of the fruitless activity, Claire hunched over the desk, flipping through the Librarian’s Log with a desperate fervor. “The wards,” she explained, not looking up as Rami joined her. “The wards fell just before. This has to be Malphas’s doing. If we can get the wards up again, the water may stop.”
“Why would she want to flood the Library?”
“Invasion didn’t work for Andras. Malphas is more clever.” Claire raced her finger down one page, then another, searching. She was too occupied to see Andras frown in offense from where he idled in an armchair. “She doesn’t care about preserving the stories. She intends to make us surrender to her.”
“Flood you out.” Andras had a petulant if thoughtful look on his face. “You would surrender before seeing the entire Library flooded and lost. And even if you didn’t—a waterlogged book is unreadable but still useful.”
“Only for a demon.” Hero gave a full-body shudder before continuing to stack boxes of scrolls on top of a chair. “A story needs to know how it goes too. If the ink runs, we could forget who we are.”
“Ink . . .” Rami jolted as a thought ran through him. He lunged, throwing Claire over his shoulder. She barely had time to squawk before she was deposited—gently, if urgently—on top of the desk.
“Explain yourself this instant!” Claire fumed as he stepped back.
“Ink. There could be unwritten ink in the water, or it could bleed from the books.”
Just one drop of unwritten ink had been enough to corrupt Hero’s book and nearly kill Brevity. It had stained Claire with a bleak possession of souls that she was still haunted by. The fury fell from Claire’s face and, reassured that she wouldn’t move, Rami turned to help Brevity up to perch on a side table. When he spun around again, Hero stopped him with a raised hand. “I get the idea. No need to manhandle me, you brute.” He clambered on top of a chair and joined Claire on top of the desk with all the awkward dignity he could manage.
Bjorn was quick to catch on and took refuge on top of a carpet-cluttered table. Echo gathered her own pond around her and her children in a way that made it crest at the edges, like a wall. The other librarians had no idea of the threat of unwritten ink and what it could do to a mortal or a spirit, but they more or less followed suit. Soon the furniture of the front lobby was dotted with a particularly anxious and awkward flock of librarians. They all regarded the floor with new apprehension. The water seeped slowly, gathering in puddles no more than an inch deep but already murky with malice.
Only Rami had been able to touch the ink, however briefly, and remain unaffected. Even so, the chill seeping into his boots felt vicious and biting cold.
“But we can’t just do nothing!” Brevity said plaintively.
“The collection is too big,” Claire muttered desolately. Hero looped an arm around her shoulders with an ease that was still new between them. It appeared a comforting gesture, but Rami suspected Hero was also braced to hold Claire back from whatever ill-advised heroics typically followed despair in Claire’s brain. “We can’t save it by hand.” The streak of certainty in her vo
ice was bitter, and there from experience.
“But we’re librarians. This isn’t just one wing; this is the entire Library. We have to do something.” Brevity’s voice threatened to break.
The water had crept up to Rami’s ankles. It was an uneven murky pool across the floor now, floorboards quickly disappearing. It hadn’t reached the bottom row of the Library’s shelves yet, but a quick calculation said they had minutes, not hours. The librarians had been efficient in sweeping up any stacks of books scattered around the front lobby, but Rami knew that somewhere deeper in the stacks, books and scrolls that had settled on the floor were taking on the first damage to their ancient pages. Bleeding ink, disintegrating paper, soggy vellum that would warp and stick to each other like decaying mulch. It would be a slow and agonizing death by water.
“We ain’t just gonna give up, dangerous or no.” It was Bjorn this time who looked ready to jump into the low tide. Rami tensed to stop him. “We’re librarians, still?”
“Librarians will.” Echo said in the warped mockingbird speech she had. The edges of her pond frothed, still a clear Mediterranean blue that held back the gray floodwater. Pallas slept on, unperturbed, at her feet, and Iambe stood protectively in front of him. Fractious as that Library wing’s relationship was, it appeared they united against threats, like any family. Echo stared past Rami, gaze locked on Brevity expectantly. Rami couldn’t do the same. Looking at Brevity was like watching a heart break in real time. She’d only just become comfortable with the mantle of librarian in time to lose it. The cherry floorboards spongy with water were her choice, and the dizzy little faerie lights overhead reflected on the water’s surface. All of it, the Library of Brevity’s making.
Librarians, and will. Echo’s words chased the tail end of that thought. Rami sloshed his way over to where Brevity was perched. “Change it.” Brevity blinked her watery eyes in confusion, first tears forming. Rami took her hand urgently. “Change it. The Library. This is your wing that we’re sheltering in. A wing changes to reflect its librarian, does it not? Tell it to change; protect the books.”
“I don’t know how,” Brevity protested. She dropped her voice, hoarse with creeping fear. “It just did it on its own after Claire left. I didn’t really control it.”
“You wished for spiderwebs,” Rami reminded her. Brevity had confessed the idle fancy in the weeks after they’d escaped the Dust Wing. It had taken some looking, but Rami had begun to notice faint gossamer puffs hidden in the nooks of the very deepest parts of the Library. Maybe they’d always been there, but Rami chose to believe not. He gripped her fingers. “Wish for something else.”
Brevity’s eyes widened even as her small pointed features remained frozen in place. For a moment, Rami feared the common thing would happen. Anxiety and fear would overwhelm the muse’s ability to create. It was a real battle, and Rami could see the ground lost and gained in the way Brevity’s breath sped up to a gallop. But then, an uncommon thing happened instead. Brevity didn’t become less anxious, not that Rami could see at least, but he could track the shift. Her eyes squeezed closed briefly, then opened. They were still bright with spinning fear, but also sharp with focus. “Will you help me?” Her voice was small but steady.
Rami was doubtful of how much help he could be, either as a Watcher or as a former assistant librarian to the Arcane Wing. But rather than voice that, he nodded firmly and loosened his grip on her fingers. Brevity pressed her palm against his and breathed deep.
Frosty flood still nettled its way up Rami’s ankles. The hem of his trousers had turned heavy with water. It amplified the small shudder that spread across the water as something in the depths of the Library roused. The air stirred with the peppery smell of old paper and time. It drifted and mixed with the moss and oak swamp water to sharpen into a breeze that stirred the feathers in Rami’s coat. Brevity’s fingers tightened around his. The knuckles went from propane blue to white, then relaxed.
“Try—” Rami started, but the rest of the encouragement stuttered in his throat as the water crested up his legs like a tide. His heart stuttered. No, they were too late, the water was rising too fast—but then the water sloshed away again. He traced the origin of the wave back to the towering shelves of the Library. Wood flexed, books breathed, and . . . and grew.
The Library grew like a plant unfurling before the sunshine. Brevity’s rose-stained shelves trembled, disturbing the floodwaters as they reached. Spindly legs, like tendrils of the vines that draped them, shot out from the bottom of the stacks. The rails along the shelves just barely managed to keep the books in place as the rows of the Library stacks grew taller, raised on legs that curved and coiled into complicated, vaguely eerie graceful arches. Farther into the shadows, a commotion echoed against the rafters. Wet thuds and the faint drip of water muddled into a frothy roar as the Library rescued its charges and realigned for a new purpose.
When silence reasserted itself, the lowest shelves of the stacks rose several feet above the water on decorative wood legs. What scrolls hadn’t fit on the shelves had been rescued from the floor and were now twined in loops of the Unsaid Wing’s vines like lush literary fruits. The Library’s rugs billowed from the rafters like particularly heavy banners, the paintings reached farther up on the walls, and even the furniture itself, festooned with stranded librarians, stood on vaguely stilt-like legs.
“My god,” Hero breathed. And it felt miracle enough to make even an atheist curse. Next to him, Claire ran her fingers over the desk they sat on—now several feet higher in the air—with disbelief.
“You did it, Brev,” Claire said.
Brevity’s hand twitched and she slowly blinked open her eyes—which weren’t her eyes. The pupils had been swallowed up by a soft shadow, and the iris flickered wood tones, then the shade of old leather, then parchment white, cycling through a spectrum of stories. “The Library—” Brevity’s voice sang with multiple chords, and she grimaced. The eerie light faded somewhat from her eyes and some of the natural blue returned to her pallor. She swallowed and her normal light tone returned. “I mean, the Library did it. I think.”
“The librarian did it.” Awe was a strange look on Bjorn’s bearded face. His thick brows knit together and he shook his head. “I ain’t never seen it happen like that, though, lass. You are a wonder.”
“She’s a librarian. When a librarian and a library work in tandem, anything can happen. She’s a librarian.” There was a chip, more like a mosaic, behind the tone in Claire’s voice. A chip of wistfulness, a chip of wonder, mortared together with a deep pride. She hugged her knees to her chest from her perch on the desk with Hero. Her smile was wet and true. “Best one I’ve ever seen.”
31
HERO
A Norseman’s not made for land. The walls of this Library close in on me sometimes, and gods do I miss the smell of the sea. Telling a story or singing a song isn’t the same unless there’s the scrape of salt in your throat. Not all my kin were seafarers, but we were all born with the tidal pull in our veins. I was born on a boat—ha! I thought I’d forgotten that!
There’s a magic to a boat. You can’t stand still, no matter how uncertain you are. On a boat, you’re always headed somewhere.
Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1112 CE
Hero swung his legs where they dangled over the edge of the desk. “As much as I do love a good waterfront property, do we have a plan for how to wish away this water next?”
The water was still flooding up between the floorboards at a slow pace, but the Library was keeping ahead of it. Not that Hero had any idea how, mind. They never caught the Library growing as dramatically as it did the first time. He’d just notice how close the sloshing water was getting to his toes, and then the next time he glanced down it would have retreated several feet. Nonetheless, Hero didn’t fancy spending an eternity sharing the librarian’s desk with Claire while Rami flopped about like a fish below them. The murky water
reached up to his ribs by now, and the layers of his feathered trench coat bloomed about him like a bedraggled cloud. The water droplets that speckled his cheek and clung to his hard, rough features were particularly appealing, and he looked like nothing so much as a thunder god rising out of the depths. Not that Hero would say so.
“All of you are staying where you are,” Rami said, daring him to argue, and really, he should have known better.
“Fancy words from a drowned pigeon who—” Hero paused as movement caught his eye. “Look.”
The aisles of the Unwritten Wing had become tributaries when the water rushed in. The giant bookcases channeled the water with an impossible current all their own. Out of one of these glided a boat.
Hero didn’t bother to rub his eyes. He’d seen weirder in the Unwritten Wing—though not by much. The craft was a fine thing and far above an emergency raft. The boat had a curved prow like a gondola, piloted expertly by a sturdy-looking damsel, and sitting in the center like the queen herself was Rosia.
Even Claire was too stunned to say anything. The boat drifted to a stop beside the desks where the rest of them had taken shelter. Rosia looked up, smiled, and stated the obvious. “There’s too much water.”
“We’re working on that,” Brevity said faintly. “Um, not to assume, but did you come to rescue us?”
“Okay,” Rosia said, as if responding to a different question. Her gaze slid to meet Hero’s. He didn’t like the expectant glint in it.
“Well, it’s not as if we had much of a choice.” He was the first to abandon his perch and step lightly into the boat. Hero could see more boats now, floating out of the shadows after their leader. Enough for all the stranded librarians. How terrifying. “Mind the gap.”
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
It felt like a river, the water, as they navigated the boat between the legs of the Library shelves. Hero craned his head back. The stacks of the Library stretched like canyon walls above them.
