by A J Hackwith
“We will.” Leto nodded.
But his eyes were reserved for the dark bronze scales. He thought of the promise he’d made to Claire, the debt he owed her. The darkness in the pit of his stomach that would never quite be banished. He thought of the feeling of falling through the gate, the weightless way the world turned quiet. It had felt welcome; it’d felt familiar. He’d already made this choice.
It made sense. Death was the way you traveled between realms. The echo of the raven roads had never really left him, but he wasn’t panicking now. Like the tumblers turning in a lock, everything fell into place inside him. He studied the glimmering sheen of the platforms, the whiteness of the feather, and the shadowy hollow of the crocodile’s jaws beyond.
31
RAMIEL
First of all, realms are proud. Realms are proud and vain creations—never forget that. Realms are too proud to bow to your wee ideas of physics and common sense. A realm doesn’t have to make sense to its inhabitants. Do not expect a realm to conform to your logic, not if you want to escape with your mind intact.
Realms are beholden to one thing, and one thing only: the inertia of their belief. Anything can happen in service to a story.
Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1673 CE
What is a story without want, without desire, without need?
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1896 CE
THE LIBRARIAN APPROACHED.
Ramiel raised his brows at her, though his eyes made sure to track where her two companions wandered, just at the edge of the gate’s vision. It was a disorienting thing; the portal was built into the floor, superimposed over the pile of bones. He had to crouch over it, but Claire walked toward him straight on, as if it were simply a doorway on her side. The effect made his neck stiff.
The Hellhounds had departed by the time he ventured into the catacombs, though the deep claw marks on the stone signified some struggle had occurred. He noted the librarian was missing the mysterious fourth companion who had pulled her through the ward at the Mdina bridge. He saw no sign of a body. He could only wonder what the price of their escape had been.
That she and her remaining companions had passed through an undocumented afterworld gate was obvious. Uriel said she’d known the gate to every surviving realm on the island, but as soon as he entered the ruins, following the Hellhound trail, it was obvious this one was not accounted for.
He located the gate at the bottom of the mass grave fast enough, urged on by the scent of death and loss that swamped the entire catacomb. It resisted as he approached, repulsed by his foreign presence. His vision had allowed him to thin the barrier enough to see and hear, but whatever ritual was required to satisfy the ancient gate was unknown to him. He knew these ruins belonged to a long-dead water god, but the worshippers had died out long before.
As long as he had them cut off from escape, he was doing his duty. If the way out of the strange realm was barred in front of them, they would have to come out soon enough.
“So. Your duty.” The librarian crossed her arms. “Your duty to ‘ensure we don’t interfere,’ meaning that the moment we cross back over, you detain us—in one piece if we’re lucky?”
Rami raised his chin. “I can swear you’ll be treated with the mercy and justice of Heaven.”
“Is that the same justice that turned the Hounds on us once we were no longer a bargaining chip? I don’t believe I have the stomach for your justice, Ramiel.”
Damn Uriel and her madness. “You can trust—”
“You’ve given me no reason to trust.” Claire cut him off with a sharp hand wave. “How can you simply stand there and do nothing while demonic forces overtake the Library?”
It was a disingenuous argument at best. Rami shrugged. “It’s in Hell. Aren’t demons always in the Library?”
“You don’t know what chaos Andras is willing to unleash to get his title back.” She shook her head. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘better the devil you know . . . ’?”
“I have tried not to know more than I have to.”
“Strikes me you had more occasion to know the man in charge than I have,” Claire said.
Rami bit down hard on a curse.
But she knew her history. He’d followed Lucifer when they’d fallen, abandoned Heaven. Not because he agreed with him or believed in the cause—Rami was not as ambitious as that. But because he was a Watcher, one of the old ones first sent to aid and teach the Creator’s fledgling creation on Earth. He’d taken that duty seriously.
And when man suffered, when Rami’s charges were dying in droves for lack of food or an abundance of disease that they lacked the knowledge to resist . . . the Watchers had taught them how to survive. The Creator had deemed it “forbidden knowledge.” And so the Watchers had followed Lucifer when the Gates of Heaven shut forever behind them.
It had been the first time he’d seen what the madness of angels could lead to. Rami had never regretted the cause of the Fall, though the result had not sat well with him. He’d lingered, watching Lucifer bandy his forces and establish a domain of his own. But he wasn’t an empire builder. He wasn’t a leader. His heart was still with his duty, the humans on Earth. Not as pawns in a futile war with Heaven, but as creatures with budding potential that could be protected. He hadn’t always done a good job of it. Doubting, wandering over the next millennia. But it had been the only path that made sense to him.
Until Uriel had offered him the position in Purgatory.
Until a strange little accountant had walked up to his bench and dropped in his lap a problem that caught Heaven’s eye.
Until Uriel had revealed her bloodlust. Until a librarian decided to show a stubborn sense of honor and complicated everything.
Rami almost found himself wishing for the Purgatory desk again.
But then, he knew he would not be returning to the Gates, no matter how this played out. Rami had only his duty left. “I am no friend of the Deceiver. Do not look for sympathies where you will find none.”
Rami noted that Claire’s companions had stopped in front of the scales in the creature’s maw. A furtive argument started. The gangly demon with wild curls—Leto, he remembered; Claire insisted he was human—gestured wildly at the handsome swordsman, motioning past the monstrous creature in the water. The man appeared upset, a crinkle appearing on his perfect brow. He could have been an angel, were it not for the calculating way his gaze flicked to the arch and back. The swordsman shook his head hard, and the argument continued. Rami could not hear the words spoken, and Claire’s intense displeasure was focused entirely on him, which meant the librarian was not aware of the discussion occurring behind her.
Curious.
She tapped her fingers on her crossed arms. “What if we offered to leave one of us with you, a hostage? A guarantee that we are striking no offense to Heaven. Your sadistic partner did seem to enjoy terrifying those she had in her grasp, but if you swear no harm would come to him, I could allow Leto to stay while I set things right.” The woman’s eyes went distant, concerned. “That might actually be the safest place for him.”
Rami ignored the offer and the opinion of Uriel, but picked up on the worry in her eyes. “Are you certain you’re fighting a battle you can win?”
“The books need protecting. It’s my library, and I won’t relinquish it. But . . .” Determination drained out of Claire with a breath, leaving behind something gentle and tired. “I’m old enough to know the costs of any victory.”
Behind her, the argument had met a begrudging standoff. The swordsman had resorted to pleading, shaking his head, but the teenage boy seemed set on something. They traded quiet words and shook hands. The teenager asked something, and the taller man, after a long silence, nodded. Then the teenager looked toward Rami, gaze lingering on the librarian’s back. It was a look so filled with unspoken ache that Rami was surprised Claire didn’t feel it. And then t
he teenager turned and walked toward the mouth of the beast.
He was climbing to the scales, Rami realized. He knew what scales in an afterlife meant. He could read a realm as well as Claire. The boy was submitting his soul for judgment. Rami had seen enough war, enough strife, to know the shoulders of defeated men. The exact line of the down-turned head of someone who knew his fate and had given up fighting it. The boy knew what the scales would find in his soul.
The librarian was not the only one who understood costs, it seemed.
“What are you . . .” Rami must have betrayed something with his face, because Claire followed his gaze over her shoulder.
The teenager had one arm bent against his stomach but held out his other in supplication. The crocodile spirit brought the scales closer. The boy placed his feet carefully on the reptilian lips and left the shore.
Claire made a sound as if she’d been struck, then breathed a word. “Don’t . . .”
Claire pelted down the beach, but the swordsman took three wide steps to intercept her, whipping his arms around her waist. She was practically lifted off her feet as she scrambled at the man holding her back.
“Stop! Don’t do this!” Claire’s voice was jagged, more shattered than Rami had ever heard it. The swordsman bent his head and muttered into her ear soft words that were entirely unheard.
The teenager paused, one hand on the scales, as he looked behind. From the distance, Rami couldn’t make out his precise expression, but the boy raised a calm hand.
And then he stepped on the scale.
An inhuman howl, half fear, half fury, welled up from the librarian as the scales started to dip. She twisted and dragged them both to the sand as the crocodile god’s jaws started to close. The boy held tight to the bronze chains of the scale and seemed to shiver as the shadows of the crocodile’s jaw passed over him. Darkness wrapped over his face. The bronze scale glimmered once, twice.
Then the scales and the boy were gone.
In the silent moment that drew out, as the crocodile god closed its mouth and sank its head back beneath the muddy waters, Rami realized his mouth had dropped open. His chest had gone cold.
A thin keen carried over the sand, and Claire collapsed in a mess of skirts and braids, shoulders trembling. The swordsman kept a tight grip on her shoulders as he crouched next to her, as if afraid to let her go lest she attack the crocodile god itself. He made awkward attempts to pat Claire’s shoulders, then resorted to drawing her forcibly to her feet.
Rami saw why. The crocodile had reoriented upon resurfacing. The boy’s soul must have satisfied, for now the great creature surfaced with its closed snout touching the shore. Its body extended, just breaking the surface, until it bridged the entire width of the waters and its impossibly long tail rested on the far shore.
The swordsman tried to guide Claire toward it, but the librarian broke free of his grasp with an explosive jerk. She strode back to the arch with a furious speed.
Her usual clay complexion was pale, her eyes red from unshed tears. Her cheeks were stubbornly dry, but the grief and the fury that limned her face gave it a fire all its own.
Rami clenched the pommel of the sword at his side, half expecting her to burst through the gate and launch herself at him.
But Claire stopped just short of the gate, chest heaving. “You did this.” Her words were rough as gravel from crying. “He was innocent, and he died because of you. And for that . . . for that, Watcher, I will remember you. And one day I will bring all of Hell upon you.”
The swordsman caught up to her and hesitated at her back. Claire didn’t wait for a reply. She twisted past her companion and stumbled, taking her broken warpath toward the crocodile bridge.
32
BREVITY
War has always followed libraries, my apprentice. History has made no effort to hide that truth from us. Look at Rome; look at the Crusades. Vanquishing an enemy and taking his books was just as strategic as taking his cannons. Books are knowledge weaponized.
And what weapons you cannot steal, you must burn.
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE
DURING A PANIC ATTACK, time takes on a liquid nature. Stopping and rushing on at once. Feeling like each struggling breath stretches out forever like taffy until the bubble bursts and the present cascades down on your head. Cold and immediate.
Brevity was surrounded by the soothing smells of oak and dust when she came to. A carpet twitched under her toes and the dribbles of tea stains eventually helped her place the underside of Claire’s desk. Big, heavy, secure. There were worse places to hide forever.
“She’s dead.”
“She’s not dead. She’s a muse; they’re immortal.”
“Maybe it’s a short flavor o’ immortality, eh? It’s her name, innit?”
“Hush, Libby. Aurora said . . .”
Three pairs of feet clustered at the opening of the desk, none of them seeming to go together. Combat boots, scuffed buckle shoes, and one pair of dainty blue hooves. Brevity buried her face in her hands and swallowed a groan.
“See! She’s alive!” A mop of red curls upended itself over the edge of the desk, and a damsel gave her an upside-down grin. “Welcome back!”
God, was that what she was like when Claire complained she was inappropriately cheerful? Brevity might have contemplated hiding, but the bubble had already burst and time pulled her forward again. She allowed the trio to drag her to her feet. Conversation was a shock of water to her senses, not clearing the panic, but compressing it. Freezing it up into a tiny bundle that caught between her ribs and held, for now. Brevity reached for the first words she could think of that sounded vaguely librarian-ish. “Wh-what are you doing out of the suite?”
“We were going to complain about the noise. It’s been going on for hours,” the red-haired damsel said. Charlotte, Brevity remembered, taking in the patched dress and scuffed buckle shoes. Probably from one of those puritan moral historicals, where girls were more symbols of . . . something . . . than characters. Purity. Sin. Life. Death. Puritans never did seem to make up their minds about it. Aurora, blue hooves toeing the carpet nervously, hung over her shoulder.
“What noi—”
The question answered itself in a creaking shudder. The Library trembled. The lights flickered, though there was no reason for them to—perhaps just to express the Library’s displeasure with the situation at hand. Books twitched uneasily in their stacks, and the damsels looked wide-eyed at Brevity.
Helplessness, sharp and familiar, welled up again, but Brevity had an audience this time. Audiences helped. Brevity put on her best smile and pretended to find something on Claire’s desk that urgently needed straightening. “The wards are up—just . . . just a precaution until Miss Claire gets back.” Her smile was guttered by another violent thunderclap that hung in the air. “That there is probably just annoying ol’ demon roughhousing. You remember Valentine’s? Ain’t nothing compared to that.”
“If the wards are up, doesn’t that mean we’re cut off—”
“S’not like we’re gonna get written anyway,” the second damsel interrupted. This damsel was short and angry, like a wet cat wrestled into a leather jacket. Her once-long blond hair had been haphazardly shaved, perfect ingenue features pinched into a frown. “Our authors been dead for decades.”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Brevity jumped in before Charlotte could be hurt by that remark. “Just librarian business. M-Miss Claire will be back any minute, and wouldn’t want to have her catch ya outside the suite, yeah?”
She shooed the damsels off, ignoring the way Aurora trailed after the other two, a quiet blue shadow that cast long, questioning looks back at Brevity as she went. They’d believed her; of course they had. It was what the Library did: distant librarians going about their business, keeping the books in their care well and at arm’s length. It was the norm Claire had set, an
d if anyone noticed that it was Brevity—social, flighty, trivial Brevity—trying to fill those shoes now, the damsels were too sweet to say so.
The empty spaces between her ribs quivered, but held. Brevity pressed her palms to the desk, feeling the vibration as another impact hit the wards. It was a steady drum now. Something was trying to invade the Library. Whether it was because Andras had lost control of his Horrors, or it was some demonic plot to pull the Library into the tug-of-war games of Hell’s court, Brevity had no way of knowing and didn’t care. From inside the wards, the Library was alone.
Alone. The word made Brevity want to crawl back under the desk, but instead she pressed her knuckles into the wood until they stung and the gilded lines of inspiration on her skin stilled. The capacity for fear was still there, because the unknown was still there. But the damsels had reminded Brevity that imagination wasn’t just a weakness; it was a tool. Anxiety could fill up the darkness with all the monsters it wished, but if Brevity tried very hard, maybe she could squeeze in one monster of her own. She was cut off from the world, but she still needed to protect the damsels, keep them in the suite, protect the books. All she needed was an audience.
Care for the books, Claire had said. There was at least one book not yet home in the Library.
33
RAMIEL
The strange thing about souls is they’re damned resilient. I mean, look at me. Librarian for six hundred years and counting. According to the log, that’s a record! You’d reckon I’d be worn thin around the edges by now. I won’t pretend I’m not filthy tired of looking at these same walls. But I’m going to keep on, not fade away. Think of the stories I’ll have to tell!
Mark my words, souls are made of tougher stuff. You can wear one down, tear one apart, unspool all the thread, shave a piece off even, but destroy one? I imagine there’s an end, somewhere. Or states of being that are as good as an end.
