The Library of the Unwritten

by A J Hackwith

  “But—”

  She should have protested harder.

  “The best way you can defend the Library is to not let Andras’s men get a hand on you.” Hero was firm. “They don’t have the Library if they don’t have the librarian. I don’t care how this fight goes. No matter what happens, don’t let them see you.”

  “That’s not—”

  She liked to imagine she’d fought more than she had.

  “It’s what Claire wanted.” Hero’s jaw was hard. He winced, closed his eyes, and took a sharp breath to correct himself. “It’s what Claire wants. You have to stay free long enough for her to get here, right? Or this is all lost.”

  And she’d agreed; of course she had. She told herself the flighty, trembling feeling in her heart was nerves, not relief, as she retreated to the stacks, behind the barricades. By the time the second ward fell, they’d thrown together what Brevity felt was a reasonable stand. Perhaps they wouldn’t even need her.

  And then the final ward began to shudder. Hero had cast Brevity a grim glance full of warning before moving to his position at the front of the barricades. Brevity positioned herself adjacent to the damsels guarding the rear, at the entrance to the stacks. This group was composed of the youngest damsels, including Aurora. Unsteady, they looked to her. She sought for something encouraging to say, one last performative act of bravery. But the moment passed.

  The final ward fell.

  There was no fanfare, no horns. The final blood black light above the desk merely died. The doors fell open, and a moving shadow swept into the Library. A legion of teeth and ambition. Brevity caught a glimpse of Andras at the back, flanked by the largest of the eldritch Horrors he called apprentices.

  There was no chance to surrender. Whatever had transpired above, Andras evidently had no illusions about the Library’s agreeableness. He would accept nothing less than total submission.

  The damsels rushed to meet them. They came out swinging. Trained by unwritten war books, they spun and struck in precise, disciplined units. Brevity felt her heart swell as they engaged with Andras’s demons and Horrors. It was a chance. They would take it.

  Brevity offered a coward’s assistance. She had an advantage as a muse. She could fade-step in the Library, flickering from one shadow to another whenever a demon or terror drew too close. She retreated to the top of the Library’s great stacks and stood on top of the long rows of shelves, flinging whatever detritus she could at demonic heads.

  But it hurt every time she stepped back while damsels rushed forward, and watched them fall on dark creatures their authors couldn’t have dreamed of. Even in the dust-clogged corners of a Library at war, Brevity could make out the shadow play of books as they died. It was the flare that got to her: the last, furious struggle of purple, red, green, blue, white, before they finally dispersed like smoke. And each time she left another person—another unwritten person, her books, irreplaceable and in her charge—to fight in her place, she dug another grave in the back of her mind and put herself in it. Her only comfort was that she couldn’t argue with Hero’s tactics. They were pushing them back. They would win this.

  And then the wyrm appeared.

  Andras’s voice was a charged command in the air, and a wave of granite scale flowed in from the hall. It was not the largest of Hell’s serpent servants, but it was large enough to create a solid wall as it slunk, lightning fast, around the back of the damsels’ line, shattering barricades in its wake. Its body glinted with armored charcoal scales, and it opened a darting mouth to loose a spray of acid that destroyed an unwritten rug on contact.

  Brevity was frozen, hidden and too far away. She could only watch with her heart in her throat. The damsels, already engaged with Andras’s forces, had no way to retreat. The wyrm threaded through the Library’s defenders. It didn’t even need to strike; it simply constricted, breaking the lines and driving the damsels on to waiting claws, teeth, and blades. It didn’t take long for Andras’s monsters to find their weakness.

  Their books.

  The damsels who stayed to fight had chosen to carry their books. The damsel suite might have been safer, but with so much at stake, damsels were stronger staying closer to their books. It freed their movement, allowing them to strike and maneuver like dervishes, but it also left them vulnerable.

  Carrying the means of their existence like hearts in their hands.

  Aurora had given Brevity a shy smile as she’d patted the breast pocket of her jacket earlier. Her pocket had shimmered a happy, vibrant teal. It made a perfect target for the claws of the Horror that tore through her with less than a thought.

  Brevity saw her fall. Saw the shock and terror and the fade from teal to gray to hollow air. She flickered, just once, as if trying to return to her book. But her body flinched back into the ink-soaked carpet, corporeal and agonized. Brevity waited, like a coward in the shadows, until the Horror turned away to seek a new target.

  Brevity fade-stepped, flickering from one shadow to the next, until she reached the girl’s side. She was already fading, violet skin seeping to gray. Her body was drifting to paper and ash before her eyes. A book turned into a grave. Brevity instinctively reached out and tried to press a hand to the wound, but more of her disintegrated under her fingers. Brevity’s hand came away black with ink and ash.

  She stared at her palm, long after the small body had dusted away, long after it was safe, as the dying raged in her ears.

  And then it quieted, which was worse.

  She fled back through shadow, twisting through the stacks. Some of the great shelves had been brought down by the wyrm’s thick body. Others lost their books and rocked worrisomely, but the Library was vast, and there were many places for a coward, a failed muse, a failed librarian, to hide. Brevity was about to move again when she heard a strangled cry. Deeper than the damsels’, and angry.

  Hero.

  Brevity flew across the stacks, stepping out from the shadows as much as she dared. She peered over the edge just in time to see Andras withdraw a short dagger from Hero’s arm. Hero was flat on the ground near the wide double doors, a hand crushed under the clawed foot of one of Andras’s largest Horrors.

  The wyrm had stopped seeking the remaining damsels and coiled in a circle around its master and his victim. More Horrors drew closer, appearing from deeper in the stacks. Sensing blood in the air, a decisive end.

  What that implied about the fates of the remaining damsels made Brevity’s chest ache.

  Andras twirled the dagger in an idle grip before flipping it in his palm and plunging the blade into the meaty part of Hero’s thigh, pulling another scream from the unwritten man. Ink pooled from a handful of other similar wounds, and the whole right side of Hero’s face was swollen underneath the black ink and ash.

  Hero tried to twist to his feet, kicking out hard with the injured leg, but the wyrm’s coiled body left no room to maneuver. The Horror standing over him shoved him down and redoubled his weight on his wrist. Andras, evidently tiring of the show, waved him off and dragged Hero to his knees. He waited while the Horrors bound him, tapping his fingers impatiently.

  “I’ve been fighting books, books, nothing but books, since I got here. But not a librarian in sight. Someone’s shirking their duties.” Andras’s voice echoed, silky and dangerous. The flat of the dagger tapped on Andras’s chin as he studied Hero’s wounds like a painter would a canvas. His features, which Brevity had previously considered stern but fatherly, were now sharp, hungry. “Why don’t you be a good book and tell me where your masters are? Where’s Claire?”

  Hero’s eyes were glazed with pain. He said nothing.

  “Come, now, Hero. We drank together in Valhalla! I know the way you strain at your leash. I sympathize, even.” He petted Hero’s bloodied cheek, dragging claw marks through the soot. Hero flinched. “So I know you wouldn’t come back to this place on your own—if you’re here
, then she is too. Why suffer for those who keep you prisoner?”

  Andras’s second-in-command held up a square, ragged book. Brevity squinted until she recognized the too-white pages. Hero’s book. The Horror shook it open and raked its claws over the front page, shredding it delicately.

  Hero’s shoulders shuddered, but then an odd sound came. It was like a wet squelch—a broken cough—until it resolved into a laugh. Claws hesitated on the page.

  “You’d be doing me a favor,” Hero croaked. His head lolled on his shoulders, eyes sliding around the ceiling until Brevity realized he was searching. They lit on the shadow where she hid, and a ragged smile forced its way onto his blackened lips. “The librarians are weak, perfidious beasts. If you need them, then I wish you good hunting. They abandoned us.”

  “I think not. Claire is my creation. I groomed her for many things, but I could always rely on her stubbornness.” Andras tilted the point of the blade under Hero’s chin. “Ah. Or should I be looking for the muse? She’ll be easier to break.”

  Hero closed his eyes. His head drooped. “Go to hell.”

  Andras made a disappointed cluck of his tongue. “That’s not much of a profanity here, you know. If you’re not going to make yourself useful, I have no need for a broken book in a place full of them.” Andras flicked the blade carelessly, opening another bloom of black ink on Hero’s chest.

  Brevity was in shadow before she realized it; then she was at the base of the stacks. The wyrm blocked her view. Damsels were dead and it was in her way. She opened her mouth. “Stop!”

  Slowly, the wyrm’s body shuddered into motion and pulled away to reveal Andras. Brevity stepped forward. Her skin crawled as the monster shifted behind her, closing her path. Books lay torn everywhere, crushed under the wyrm’s weight. Pages slipped beneath her heels. Wet clung to her cheeks. She crouched down to inspect Hero when she reached him.

  Up close, the ash-gouged wounds and pooling ink were even worse. Hero’s lip was split and black with ink as he managed to open his good eye. His words stumbled through a broken mouth. “We had a plan.”

  “I improvised.” Brevity had to whisper to keep her voice from cracking. “I’m not strong enough to be a hero.”

  Hero’s laugh was small, brittle. “Me neither.”

  “I am prepared to accept the Library’s surrender,” Andras’s cool voice intruded.

  Brevity drew her eyes from Hero. Andras was smiling. “I’ll surrender, but the books stay. You have to promise no more books are destroyed.”

  Andras’s smile grew. Not pleased, amused. “Is that all? The Library is no good to me burned. I’ll spare your pets, for now.”

  A little of the sour tension leaked out of Brevity’s shoulders. But then Andras glanced again toward Hero.

  “It would be unwise to leave insurrectionists at my back, however.” Andras made a motion. The Horror holding Hero’s book moved before Brevity could react. Claws grasped a handful of pages and tore.

  Hero’s whole body stiffened, and his eyes rolled back. He didn’t scream, which worried Brevity even more. As if someone had cut his strings, he fell forward.

  Hero’s colors had always been subdued, held close to his book. Simmering navy, the occasional gilded shadow of pewter and green. Hero, the character, had been colorful and bright enough for both. But Brevity felt it, like a shriveling under her hand, when his colors began to fade. Brevity gripped him by the shoulders and could only watch as Andras’s Horror grasped for another handful of pages as the scraps floated to the floor.

  The blizzard of pages drifted through the air. The last scrap of paper landed on the carpet. As if marking finality, it was accompanied by a deep, earth-shuddering boom.

  Then another, more out of place: boom.

  The entrance to the wing flew open. The heavy oak doors rocked back on their hinges. As Andras’s temporary ward dropped, electrified air swept through the space, carrying in with it the smoky residue of powerful magic and a crackle of lightning. A monstrous figure blocked the doorway, wings splayed, and the gargoyle let out a howl that came from every direction and multiple dimensions at once.

  The echo died a moment later, and smoke settled in tiny eddies around the feet of three figures.

  A gawky and thin teenage boy.

  A soldier holding a sword kissed with lightning.

  And a woman.

  Claire flicked a gaze of cold fury around the room before landing on Andras and his men.

  “Get your hands off my book.”

  40

  CLAIRE

  It’s not just for the sake of the authors and the books that we keep the unwritten sleeping. Yes, we have to preserve the stories, and yes, the trauma an escaped book could do to an author is significant. But the whole situation is rotten for them, isn’t it? Coddled away to sleep in some dusty realm?

  Might be, the unwritten have an idea or two of their own on how their story should go. Might be, they’d have reason to be angry. Pray they never wake up.

  Librarian Fleur Michel, 1798 CE

  THE STENCH OF CRACKLING leather and burned ink stole the breath from her lungs. Claire tried to breathe through her mouth, until her tongue clotted with paper ash. The Library’s tall stacks slumped like defeated giants, ripped from their moorings and spilling their contents in a trail of paper and leather around the front lobby. Black blood and fading sheaves were the evidence of those crushed underfoot or eaten by the wyrm’s acid. So many books damaged, so many stories lost.

  Claire’s eyes were reserved for one book in particular.

  Soot and ink nearly completely covered Hero’s skin, painting his bronze hair gray. He was barely conscious, but swollen and split lips twitched up as he tried to open his injured eye. The Horror held a claw over Hero’s pages, uncertain what to do now.

  Andras forgot his game entirely as his yellow eyes lingered over Claire, taking in her patches of blood, stopping at the amulets looped around her neck. For the time being, surprise and the dangerous sizzle of Rami’s sword kept the Horrors at bay. The gargoyle creaked at her back, wings flexing to create a protective shadow over their heads. It let out a low, warning rumble. Claire raised her hand, and it stilled.

  Andras’s eyes narrowed. “It appears the Hellhounds have not lived up to their reputation.”

  “Can’t blame them too much for their failings,” Claire said. “Demons are so unpredictable.”

  “We share that with humans.” He opened his mouth as if to say something more. It would be just like him to have a dramatic speech, Claire thought. But he seemed to think better of it. His hand twitched, and the time to talk was over. “Kill them.”

  The Horrors surged like the tide.

  Rami strode forward and met one group, gray feathered coat billowing as he buried his blade in the chest of the first demon that approached, then pulled it cleanly out to strike at another. The smell of ozone and storms and fury filled the air, and he moved like a powerful dervish. A building storm of lightning and force. Ramiel, the Thunder of God.

  The gargoyle had swept aside the nearest Horrors with one hand, and the wyrm surged and attacked. The serpent twisted and coiled around the bellowing creature. The wyrm was bigger, but the gargoyle’s stone skin was slick, difficult to gain purchase on. They clashed in a titanic roil of scale and stone that knocked another shelf to the ground.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw Leto hunker behind a shelf near the door as he’d promised.

  Leto. Matthew Hadley.

  He might have been, what, a nephew? Grandchild? Had it really been that long? The impossible thought had a stranglehold on her heart. In a whisper, while they prepared in the hallway, Rami had told her what he knew and how he’d found Leto. It was too much for a coincidence.

  And too much to think of now. Claire ducked as a wing swept over her head, and she focused her attention on the demon at the eye
of the storm. Andras took one look at the titans clashing over their heads, cast a sour look at Brevity, then turned and ran.

  Claire cursed and rushed forward to where Brevity supported Hero. The Horrors were beginning to move again. “Arlid! Anytime now!”

  A grackling cry built from the doorway. A conspiracy of ravens, all those freed from the Arcane Wing and more, shrieked in and swept wide passes through the air, out of the reach of the demons. They dove in groups to rake sensitive tentacles and scalps of the Horrors, claws coming away bloody. The flock swept around and hurtled themselves at the ground. Birds disappeared in a flurry of feathers and came up leather-clad fighters, wielding thick swords and cruel sickles.

  Andras’s Horrors, suddenly flanked, whirled and lost formation. Arlid cast the nearest one a manic grin and lopped its spiny head off.

  A shattering sound drew Claire’s attention. Two ravens had cut off Andras at the entrance to the stacks. The demon held them at bay with his strange black dagger. Then he ripped a red-gemmed bauble from his coat and flung it against the nearest shelves. An unnatural fire bloomed where it shattered. Claire’s heart stopped as the first books began to crackle. She staggered to her feet.

  Then another row of unwritten books smoldered and leather began to boil and pucker.

  “Brevity!” Panic made Claire’s voice shrill and sour.

  “On it!”

  Brevity didn’t bother with running: one moment she was behind her; the next, she emerged from a shadow near the flames. She ripped a light globe from the wall as she passed and bolted toward the fire, dodging Horrors and ravens locked in combat. She twisted the globe sharply until it turned blue and began spraying a fine jet of delicate, glimmering foam at precise places on the shelves. The foam evaporated the moment it touched the books, taking the fire with it. “I’ve got this!”

  Claire turned back. Andras stepped over the burned bodies of the ravens. He tilted his head, as if acknowledging her, before disappearing into the stacks. She cursed and moved after him.