The God of Lost Words

by A J Hackwith

  “How long can this go?” He craned his head to find the boat behind him, which Brevity and Claire had claimed for their own. Claire made a face.

  “Which ‘this’? Malphas’s flooding or Brevity’s ability to adjust the Library ahead of it?”

  Hero raised his brows and shrugged. “Both?”

  “Forever, to the first,” Brevity said, the corners of her eyes crinkled in concentration. “And . . . not forever . . . to the second.”

  “You’re doing great, Brev,” Claire said quietly. Her hand tightened on Brevity’s, and the unspoken passed between them. “But Hero’s right: we can’t wait for Malphas to tire first.”

  “We’re in no position to counterattack,” Rami reminded them from the boat bringing up the rear. Water still dripped from his shoulders and flattened the feathers in his coat like a drowned bird.

  “You think too small, Watcher.” Andras tsked. To Hero’s infinite displeasure, the demon had claimed the other seat in his boat and sat as if it were a pleasure cruise.

  “We don’t attack,” Claire said with a thoughtful look. “We negotiate.”

  Hero scoffed. “When has diplomacy ever worked for us?”

  “First time for everything. We need to send a message.” Claire rose in the boat and cleared her throat. “Bird!”

  Cursing, in every non-language one could imagine, pealed down from the rafters, quickly heralding a swoop of dusty black feathers. Bird landed on the tip of the boat, heavily enough to make it bobble precariously. Claire ignored the waves and discreetly used Brevity’s shoulder for balance. “Bird, I would like you to carry a message to Malphas and the court.”

  For a terrible bird who spoke only in expletives, Bird could express fathoms with her silence and insulted ruffle of feathers. Claire sighed. “No, I don’t have crackers.”

  Bird turned away and unfolded her wings lazily. A preflight stretch, and Hero was sorely tempted to see if Bjorn’s ghost fires were strong enough to roast a raven. “Fine!” Claire stopped her with an irritated sigh. “Crackers. I’ll . . . ask one of the damsels to bake us one or something.”

  “We already made you boats,” Rosia said with a prim air from the next boat over.

  “I’ll ask very, very nicely,” Claire grumbled.

  Bird, apparently satisfied, refolded her wings after a leisurely stretch. She hopped up on Claire’s arm and regarded her with beady, suspiciously intelligent eyes. She waited, expectantly, for the message.

  “How do we even know they will be willing to talk?” Brevity asked hesitantly. She added, a little softer, “Last time didn’t go so well.”

  “They’re already flooding the wing; at least we’ll be provisioned if they try fire,” Hero noted with a dry curl of his lip.

  “They’ll want to talk. Even if Malphas doesn’t want to negotiate a surrender, there’s one thing we have that will get her attention,” Claire said. Bird deigned to allow her to stroke a hand down her sleek back, clacking her beak quietly. Something unspoken passed between the two, and the raven gently launched into the air. “There’s one thing you can rely on demons always wanting.”

  “Souls?” Rami said quietly.

  “Power?” Brevity guessed.

  “Pathetically on-the-nose aesthetic choices?” Hero chimed in.

  Bird circled once overhead, disappearing into shadows, then out again. Then, curiously quiet, she dropped into a dive that caused everyone but Claire to duck and startle.

  “Revenge,” Claire said.

  A low grunt of discomfort made Hero frown behind him reflexively. Andras, who had been suspiciously quiet up till then, held a hand to his hair, gingerly patting at a patch of the tiger stripe while Bird fluttered overhead. Andras studied a wetness on his fingers with a frown. “Your pet bit me, Claire. Poor sportsmanship.”

  “Just borrowing a tuft of hair, Andras. I thought you’d prefer that to a sample of flesh.” Claire paused as Bird perched momentarily in front of her, a clutch of gray and gold hair in one claw. Claire nodded, and Bird launched into the air again, quickly gaining height until she was swallowed in the dusty shadows of the rafters overhead.

  Hero watched her go. “Ah, a hostage exchange.”

  “Don’t give me that much credit, book.” Andras had recovered his dignity, though a cowlick of hair still stood at disarrayed angles above the widow’s peak of his forehead. “Malphas hardly cares for one exiled demon.”

  “Precisely.” Claire was still watching the dark overhead. Bird must have made her exit when Claire turned around to face him with a positively terrifying smile that sent a thrill through Hero. He loved it when she let herself play the villain. If it wasn’t so much fun, he’d be worried she was too good at it. “She cares so little about you she’s going to be very interested in your reappearance. You two had a bit of a history before your fall, didn’t you?”

  Andras’s cool expression curdled. “Everyone has a history if you live long enough.”

  “I think Malphas will be very interested in our plans for your future, don’t you?”

  “You intend to hand me over.” Andras’s lips formed a disgusted moue. “We have a deal, pup. Don’t think I won’t delight in torturing your soul if you betray me.”

  “Torture?” Brevity’s head came up in alarm, and Hero narrowed his eyes as Rami didn’t react. He suspected they’d made a deal with a literal devil, but he wouldn’t have thought an angel—their angel—would have gone along with it. Rami’s face settled into a craggy grimace, and Hero made a note to have a very strenuous conversation. Later.

  “I thought you’d be proud, old man.” Claire let the threat hang, acidic and brilliant, in the air before dismissing it with a wave of her hand. “I have a plan that satisfies both our goals.”

  “A plan? Some ruse to fool Hell? My, you have grown up bold, my girl.” Andras appeared to weigh his options for a moment before shrugging. “And what’s my role in this plan?”

  “Trusting me.” Claire’s smile was viciously bright. She regained her seat in the boat and smoothed out her trousers with meticulous care. “For now, we wait.”

  “For what?” Rosia asked from her perch. The damsel at the prow was incredibly competent and had navigated their little line of boats down the twists and turns of the aisles of the Library, made all the more treacherous by the continually rising water. Ahead, Hero could see a square of light and what looked like a ramshackle dock composed entirely of emptied bookcases and one soggy divan. The occupants of the damsel suite had been much more industrious and quick to respond in the face of an emergency than their gaggle of librarians had been.

  “For Malphas to get greedy.” Claire’s voice was quiet, her head tilted down over the side of the boat. Her reflection held a frown and wavered as the bleak, dingy water continued to slosh and gather.

  * * *

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Their river path emptied out, as Hero had suspected, at the damsel suite. The damsels descended upon the arriving boats like a team trained for the purpose. Several brawny women dressed in homespun helped secure the boats to the dock, while a charming boy offered blankets and tea as the librarians reached solid land. With Brevity’s librarian pull for preservation, the damsel suite had responded along with the rest of the Library. The threshold, once barely a bit of wood trim marking the door to the damsel suite, was now a block of hewn timber that jutted out like a plinth. It extended down into the depths of the water and had evidently raised the entire damsel suite above the tide line. Hero lingered as the poor hospitality lad made an entire fuss over the state of Rami’s soggy coat. It was quite a delightfully awkward show when the boy, intent on his duties, tried to take the coat from him and Rami demurred. The big man finally extracted himself—coat intact—only after accepting enough blankets to swaddle an elephant. He joined Hero at the door with a grimace. “Not a word.”

  “That’s the delightful thing�
�I don’t have to.” Hero gloated only a little as he accepted one of the blankets and tossed it about his shoulders like a gallant cloak. Rami narrowed his eyes—whether in fondness or annoyance, it was impossible to tell—and tossed a second blanket at his face. Playfulness was also a new development that was Hero’s fault, and he was so delighted he almost forgot to dodge out of the way.

  The interior of the damsel suite had not escaped unchanged. The floor felt sturdier, lined with thick mortared slate rather than the more porous wood panels of the Library. And it was a hive of activity. A carpentry staging area occupied the corner nearest the door, with several book characters covered in sawdust and satisfaction as they crafted boat parts that Hero couldn’t identify. Deeper into the parlor, he could only make out various tables of potions, wires, and weave. The characters of the damsel suite might have started out their existence as poorly written mascots of little expertise, but none of them had remained that way. Characters could grow, change, even with their books still attached. Maybe that was what it meant to have a soul.

  “Oh, that looks heavy. I can—” It had taken all of ten seconds for Rami to be recruited into the wood preparations. He fell in easily, soggy feathered coat and all. The lead carpenter, a dour-looking woman with shaved hair, eyed him prospectively before shoving a tool in Rami’s hand. A creature that had lived on Earth for most of its history would have to have learned a thing or two about boating, Hero supposed.

  Brevity was elbow-deep in some arcane book repair, with several of the refugee librarians watching over her shoulder. Echo and her daughter appeared to be calling up more vines from their wing to wind and shore up the dock outside. It occurred to Hero that the only skill he really could contribute was making people bleed, literally or figuratively. A poor offering in any real emergency.

  Perhaps one of the damsels would teach him . . . something. The idea of self-improvement was a radical thought, and Hero lost himself considering the options for a moment. Medicine, perhaps, if he could no longer rely on the superior healing of a book character. He told himself that was a satisfactorily self-serving skill to master, but the second thought, which came quick on its toes, was that the important people around him had the pesky habit of perishing, and he refused to allow more of that.

  Claire had Andras cornered in an armchair far across the room, probably committing more delightful villainy. That brightened Hero’s mood and he started to make his way toward that entertainment until something snatched at his coat sleeve.

  “Reader. You will come.” Rosia was still a wraith child, half Victorian gothic and half nightmare elf, dainty and ethereal. But she felt as if she took up more space since she’d lost her book. The Rosia that had emerged out of the pool was less flighty, more solid and thoughtful. She held on to Hero’s sleeve without a hint of reproach as he frowned at her.

  “I really don’t know what you could possibly have to do with me,” Hero said. He should feel a kinship with Rosia, the only other character who had seen her book destroyed—dissolved into the unwritten ink—and remained material and whole. Instead, he felt uneasy around her.

  “The realm, the guide, the librarians. You are the Reader. Your job isn’t done.” Rosia may have become less of a ghost, but it hadn’t diminished her proclivity for eerie pronouncements. She gestured vaguely at the room and looked at him expectantly. Hero glanced away uneasily, but the others of his strange people were deep in new tasks.

  He was the sole idle person in a hive of rather irritating competence and productivity. Might as well. Hero sighed and gestured to Rosia. “Lead the way, spirit.”

  Rosia beamed up at him—less innocent, but more satisfied than she used to be—and the wall behind her, which had been a solid set of shelves, now sported a narrow hallway. The damsels working near it didn’t even appear to notice the change and merely moved as their tables and settees were abruptly a meter shifted. Rosia didn’t release her grip on his sleeve as she turned and tugged Hero away from the hum of a Library in the act of rebellion.

  32

  HERO

  A realm. I knew I was never going to find a realm. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I had probably hoped that, banded together, the Library could claim some kind of public commons. In my wildest fantasies, I imagined a benefactor. Perhaps Elysium’s heroes would welcome us into their green fields and I could feel the sun again.

  But I knew we were never going to find a realm. The only home we had was the one we carried with us.

  Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE

  The damsel suite had started as an underutilized reading room. A handy place for detaining the most stubborn of characters who escaped their books, which soon evolved into a kind of refugee center for misused characters—damsels, sidekicks, love interests—to live more of a life than their stories allowed. Under Claire’s and Brevity’s tenure, it had grown into a suite of rooms, then a complex that sprawled and grew to match the inhabitants’ needs. The Unwritten Wing appeared to approve of their continued presence, however much Claire had objected to the risk of unwritten books changing.

  The result was a cozy amalgam of architecture. Rosia led Hero down a narrow passage with wood panel that matched the main lounge but quickly turned down a set of iron spiral stairs, through an industrial workshop, and apace down a round hallway apparently built for hobbits. Hero emerged at the other end with a backache and was still stretching the kink out of his shoulders when Rosia stopped at a door and motioned. “In here, if you will.”

  Hero stepped into a concrete room. It took a moment of muffled silence and discrete warning signs on the wall to identify it as some kind of soundproof bunker softened with a rug and parlor chairs.

  “Expecting the worst, are we?” he said lightly, despite his growing nerves.

  “Not precisely.” Rosia shook her head. “Some of us come out of our stories with our own needs. Some need space. Even the Unwritten Wing can be overstimulating from time to time.”

  “Oh.” Hero considered the thick walls with new ideas. Cooling and calm instead of cold, serene rather than stark. “Should Brevity have a room like this?”

  Rosia’s smile was soft. “She’s always welcome, but external stimulation isn’t where the librarian’s shadows hide.”

  Hero couldn’t argue with that. Rosia gestured but he opted to lean against the back of the armchair rather than sit. Strange: when Rosia was an eerie ghost child she hadn’t bothered Hero in the least, but there was something about this new, self-composed version that constantly made him feel as if he was walking into a trap. “Are we here to talk about Brevity? I see how you look at her.”

  It was a jab designed to level the playing field, and Hero did feel a vicious bit better as heat flooded to Rosia’s cheeks. She sat herself on the couch opposite and took a moment before giving Hero a level look. “The librarian needs you. The Library needs you, Reader.”

  She kept calling him that. And it raised a thrill up Hero’s neck each time, a muddle of emotions he refused to unpack. “Of course they need me. Have you seen how much trotting over hither and yon I’ve done for them?” Hero shrugged, comfortable in his verbal armor. “I should get a knighthood. Or at least a pocket watch and some frequent-flier miles.”

  Hero had never owned a pocket watch, not in his story, not here, but a thousand alien concepts had flooded into him since he’d read the stories of the Library. For a former denizen of a high-fantasy novel, “frequent-flier miles” was just as nonsense a concept as light-speed spaceships, and not nearly as grounded in the material world. But that’s what stories did. Let enough impossible things pass through you and they gain a kind of reality. Stories grant the impossible emotional gravity, create new orbits—and your mental universe expands.

  Hero found it entirely irritating, in point of fact.

  If the words were gibberish to Rosia, she was too composed to show it. Her wide full-moon eyes blinked at him slowly. “But
your work is incomplete.”

  Hero reeled back with the offended air of a cat before water. “I beg your pardon? I have gathered every wing of the Library in one place! Even Poppaea didn’t accomplish that!” If there was one thing Hero excelled at, it was taking offense. He was still building up a good self-righteous steam when Rosia’s next words gutted him.

  “Every wing except one.”

  The air in Hero’s lungs was biting. He knew, but he didn’t. “What do you mean?”

  “You have gathered every wing of the Library, except one. And the stories missing dwarf all of us here.”

  Hero’s spine turned to ice, then to iron. “I am never going back there. I died there.”

  But I got better, was the way he preferred to finish that joke to others, which served the dual purpose of being entertaining and entirely avoiding the truth.

  “That’s why only you can go back. Only you can speak to them, the stories of that wing.” Rosia looked sad, near apologetic. “Reader, you have one more journey ahead of you.”

  The silence, the filtered air, the dim lights, it all turned on a coin flip, from soothing to suffocating. Hero looked away with the taste of dust gathering on his tongue. “Claire would never ask me to go back.”

  “But you will go nonetheless.”

  “Why?” Hero was shouting though he didn’t intend it. “Why will I go? Why me? Why not you? You keep calling me ‘Reader,’ like it means something. But you’re just the same as me, story without a book.” His voice was thick. He swallowed and tasted ash. “You go to the Dust Wing.”

  “I am not the Reader,” Rosia said.

  “What does that mean?” Hero exploded into a yell and realized, distantly, Ah yes, this is why Rosia led me all the way down here. Comforting, my ass. He began to pace. “Tell me. If you know what I am now, tell me.”