by A J Hackwith
“You saved yourself. You write your own story here.” Something crumbled, just enough for Claire to wrap her arms around herself, as if making sure they didn’t do anything they weren’t supposed to do. She smiled. “I’m . . . I’m glad I got to meet you, Leto. Go. Be good. No—be better than good: be happy.”
42
CLAIRE
Here is how you make a sheet of parchment: Soak a pelt in a scouring bath until it softens. Scrape the hair off. Treat the skin with astringent tannic acids. Rack and torture until tight.
And here’s how you make a story: Soak a life in mortality. Scrape the soul.
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1899 CE
FOR THE SECOND TIME in as many days, Claire sat down and began to repair the binding of Hero’s book.
His was not the only book to be repaired. Claire kept her eyes pinned on the tattered binding in front of her, but she could nearly hear the hurts of the hundreds of torn, crushed, burned unwritten works around her. The books trodden underfoot by Horrors, the carpets with holes eaten by acid, the paintings torn by raven blades.
Claire didn’t see books; she saw graves.
She saw a thousand lives on each cindered page. Here, a band of adventurers, suffocating in a forest. There, a pair of lovers, entombed in the moment before a kiss. There, torn beneath the edge of a fallen chair, the teenage outcast that never learns they are something more.
A thousand stories, caught middream, eviscerated from the possibility of being real. Some, granted, were never to be written—their authors were long dead—but others had authors just beginning to dream them. Each book was magic, a potential never to be duplicated. With a book destroyed, they faded all the same. Worlds trapped, suffocating on the page.
One thought suffocated more than most. Not long ago, it wouldn’t have bothered her at all. She’d called them things. Pressed a scalpel against their hurts and called them unreal. When books were merely as enchanted objects, annoying simulacra. But now . . . now their deaths smelled of ash and acid and ink turned sour.
And as little as she cared to admit it, overriding it all was the concern for the still body on the couch next to her.
Hero had drifted in and out of consciousness during the confrontation, but once the ravens left and the danger passed, he’d succumbed to a deep sleep. Most of the fresh pages she’d stitched into his book just days ago had been clawed and torn. The front cover was blackened with char, and the edges were sodden with ink and soot. If possible, he’d done even worse injury to himself than before. She hadn’t been able to get a proper conversation to assess the origin of his injuries, but Brevity had told her an absolutely ridiculous tale of Hero’s . . . heroics.
She would have to be careful not to use that phrase in front of the vain creature. There would be no living with him.
Claire found herself hoping there would be some living with him.
She glanced to the couch and gave another grunt, pushing it all out of her head. She focused on rebinding Hero’s pages. Again. Slice the strands of old thread, divide the signatures. Trim the papers. Mark the new spine. Cut the groove. Fit the cord. Reconnect the signatures. Adjust the press. Thread and stitch. Thread and stitch. So much threading and stitching.
She worked the finishing chain stitch up the spine, tied it off, and leaned back to rub the numbness out of her fingers. She let her gaze wander to give her eyes a moment of rest. The Library sank into a sepulchre of quiet.
Rami had departed with Leto, promising to return when he was able. She worried he would encounter questions that were best left unanswered, but the Watcher seemed confident in his ability to maneuver Heavenly bureaucracy. She hoped he was right to be so confident; she’d had enough of war.
Brevity, after orchestrating a cleanup of the worst of the mess, expressed a preference for hovering over Claire like a rather concerned sparrow. After Brevity checked her tea needs for the third time, Claire had sent her off to the depths of the stacks to inspect the ashes of her burned books.
The memory of flames igniting under a black blade unsettled her focus again. Claire took a long sip of tea. Her books. Her arrogance. Beatrice. Her longing for Earth. Andras had only played on the foolish secrets and tender fears that Claire had kept. He’d set the fire, but she’d provided the tinder to burn it all down.
Andras had always said the game was just children playing in the dirt, exposing wiggling things to the light of day.
And she was exposed now. Brevity had gasped when Claire instructed her to assess and repair her books.
“Yours, boss? Are you sure you don’t want me to bring them up for you, and—”
“No.” Claire shook her head. “Things got . . . stirred up when I confronted the Arcanist. It’s best if you repair them. I trust you.”
The surprise that sparked across her assistant’s face, blooming into starry joy, made Claire deeply sorry for the diet of harsh words she’d fallen into over the years. A habit she’d never given thought to before. She sent Brevity off with supplies, drowning that introspection under a swig of tea as she focused on Hero’s repairs.
Whatever else would happen due to her rash invocation of the Library, she could fix one book.
Feeling returned to her fingertips and she rubbed out the tingles as she dug through the drawer for the binding paste. Claire startled when Rami cleared his throat. The fallen angel slouched against a bookcase, deep in the collar of his feathered coat. His broad olive features, usually grim and sure, held an uncertain, shy question as he looked at her.
“Leto passed the pearly gates?” Claire asked.
“With flying colors,” Rami said. “He seemed a little put off at the idea of paradise. It won’t surprise me if he’s running Purgatory within the month.”
The thought made the hollow in Claire’s chest warm, mending a little. “That’s . . . good.”
A whisper of a smile was there, then gone. “I’m sorry you didn’t have longer with him. If you like, I could try to find the records, see if he was—”
“No. Andras as much as confirmed it, and . . .” Claire hesitated. “He’s where he’s supposed to be now. As am I.”
A stymied emotion settled in Rami’s frown. Claire was new to the company of angels, but she had begun to suspect his innate sense of justice was frequently going to run smack against her desire to be left alone. She sighed. “What?”
“In Mdina—Brevity mentioned you left behind someone dear. If you like, I could—”
Beatrice. Claire’s fingers seized up painfully. She cursed and rubbed her knuckles, forcing herself to breathe slowly through her nose. Beatrice had sacrificed herself. Yet, if the labyrinth’s blasted portals could be believed, she escaped. Might have escaped. No one knew whether Beatrice still existed, book or woman. Bea always did like the allure of a mystery. Claire sighed.
“It’s a kind offer, but . . . no. Our stories are . . . separate now.”
Rami made a frustrated noise. “Still. It’s obvious you cared—”
“No trouble finding your way back, then?”
Rami accepted the diversion for what it was: a closed door. He shrugged. “No trouble. It appears . . . Hell accepts me.”
“How curious. His Pissypants doesn’t usually take to drifters. But then I hear you two have a history.” Claire softened the words with a nod to the pot on the caddy beside the desk. “Tea?”
“I prefer coffee, if you have it.”
Claire made a face. “Well, now you definitely can’t stay.”
Humor fell flat, as it often did for her. Rami’s gaze trailed to the materials on Claire’s desk. She saw it skim over the small ridge of books and land on the amber and gray dagger perched on the corner. The gleam of the blade seemed to wink at them.
“You’re really certain you caught all of him in that thing?”
Claire refused to divert her attention to the blade. Andras
didn’t deserve it. “The parts that were trying to subjugate all of us, at least. If he can stage a coup from a scabbard, he deserves the whole realm.”
“But how did you do it?” Claire gave him an offended look, and Rami backtracked. “No offense intended, Claire, but you were limping and holding that sword like a dead fish when you ran after him.”
“Yes. I suppose if I keep my position, I should probably fix that training gap.” Claire ignored Rami’s alarm. “I can’t actually take all the credit. Andras made a fatal error. He angered the Library.”
“Even I know not to do that. Human dreams. Prickly.” A voice dusty as the grave made both Claire and Rami jump. The demon at the door padded toward them without invitation.
Rather than the archaic clothes that Andras wore, she was clad mostly in supple, flowing rose leathers, tooled with flowers and polished to a sheen. Wild hair the color of cold steel, unkempt and proud, bushed around a sharp face of worn tan skin. She looked like precisely everyone’s grandmother, if one’s grandmother kept the blood of her enemies under her nails.
“Malphas.” Claire said the name of the general of Hell’s armies on a sigh. Lucifer’s second-in-command; all of Hell knew her name better as a whisper.
Malphas gave a regal smile.
Claire crossed her arms with obvious resignation. “I stave off political intrigue, put down a coup for Hell, and he couldn’t even be bothered to come himself?”
“You don’t seem happy to see me, kiddo.” Malphas’s eyes were gold like Andras’s, but they lacked even the artificial warmth of his. She was cold and ancient as burial iron. Other demons called her the War Crone, and it suited. Mother of war, grandmother of death. As she approached, her leathers became less rose colored and more a shade of blood-soaked hide. Loss flowed like a river around her. She flicked a glance around the ravaged Library lobby. “If this is what ‘staved off’ looks like, I advise you not to enter politics.”
“Saints preserve me from such a fate,” Claire said just to watch Malphas frown.
Malphas’s eyes slid over Rami. A hook of a smile appeared. “Ramiel. I thought Heaven’s warhorse had been tamed into a mule. What are you doing here?”
“I keep my own business.” Ramiel’s words were stilted.
Claire risked a glance. She’d always considered the fallen angel a stiff soldier type, but this was new. He stood ramrod straight, his large, calloused hands clenched at his thighs, with the prey’s instinct that complete stillness was the only way to avoid drawing unwanted attention. Malphas had that effect on longtime acquaintances.
“I see you two know each other,” Claire murmured. She waited until Malphas stopped at the edge of her desk. “If you came for a debrief, we don’t have a final tally on the damages yet.”
Malphas waved that off, as if the domain of numbers and loss was for weaker minds. “I came to see for myself this codex. Something that made Andras finally show his hand must be powerful.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
Malphas caught the flat note in Claire’s voice, and the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes tightened speculatively. “You’re too intelligent to defy me. Do you mean the pages are already destroyed?”
“Is that what a good librarian would do?” Claire met Malphas’s level gaze. “The Library is secure and Lucifer’s secrets are safe. You can tell the court that.”
“Yes . . .” Malphas’s lips thinned before transforming into a positively terrifying gentle smile as her eyes landed on the dagger, concern forgotten. “Such a compact little prison. Precious.”
Claire stifled a groan at the affectation. The gentler Malphas became, the bigger the ball of dread grew in her stomach. Rami twitched and drew closer behind her. “In a way. I’m not certain on the specifics of how Andras created it, but it captures a being. Just not the one he intended,” Claire said.
“Andras always had a better mind for deception than strategy. I was the one to toss him out the first time, you know.” Malphas plucked up the blade, holding it this way and that. “A useless weapon, but the court will have a trophy.”
“You mean the Arcane Wing,” Claire corrected her, earning a flash of warning displeasure. Malphas was a long-standing, revered general. The War Crone had no enemies, because her enemies were all dead. Claire kept her thoughts from her face. “It is an artifact of the Library’s Arcane Wing and belongs there. That doesn’t change just because there’s a demon in it now.”
Malphas considered. Bony fingers, hard as granite and with blackened nails, tapped along the edge of the blade. “Our lord has ways of dealing with failed rebellions.”
“Failed,” of course, was the key word. Claire knew Lucifer encouraged the plotting and backstabbing in the court as a way to keep his most powerful demons distracted. With a general like Malphas safeguarding his throne, he could afford the chaos. “And if His Vilest would like to come and extract Andras’s soul for punishment, he’s welcome. But until there’s a new Arcanist in place, I’m sure Lucifer would agree that my charge is to guarantee no artifacts wander off the inventory.”
Malphas set the dagger down by the nearest stack of books, losing interest. Instead she focused her full attention on Claire, which felt a queer mix of predatory and maternal. “About that. You have stolen from my army.”
It was a flicker of a moment, a trick of the light, when a shadow melted across Malphas’s features and turned them from wizened to skull-like, then back. Claire held the fear in her mouth rather than swallow and draw attention to her exposed throat. “As you said, I am too intelligent to cross you, Malphas.”
“Yet I smelled the burning from the hallway. Those Horrors and that wyrm were mine. Andras was mine, despite his reassignment. So it falls to me to name a new successor.” The train of thought behind Malphas’s granite eyes was impossible to guess. “There are several well-established demons campaigning for the honor—”
“No demons,” Claire said, more harshly than was wise. “I won’t share the Library with another grasping, plotting viper. There’s too much power in the Arcane Wing. The Arcanist needs to be someone who has no interest or ability to profit from it. Andras was proof enough of that.”
“As you said, you are intelligent,” Malphas mused. She leaned forward, patting Claire’s cheek with sharp fingertips that left cold grit there. Then the crone demon tapped her fingers at her wrinkled throat, making an obvious show of considering. “But if not a demon, then who? That knocks out a sizable portion of qualified candidates.”
Claire felt like she’d volunteered herself out onto a crumbling ledge and was now being asked to tap-dance. She traded a wary expression with Rami. The fallen angel gave a little nod, and she turned back to Malphas. “Rami would make an excellent curator.”
Malphas’s smile tilted over the edge from amused to disgusted. “A fallen angel is no better than a demon—worse, in fact, if he’s proven to have such pliable loyalties. What’s to keep him from making a play?”
“I have no interest in any game of yours, War Crone.” Rami still looked as if he was waiting for an ambush, the mouse under a cat’s paw, but he squared his shoulders. “In fact, I will only stay with the stipulation that I swear no oath to you or your throne. I believe that disqualifies me for any titles or honors in the court, does it not?”
“You are just as weak willed as ever,” Malphas hummed. “But an interesting pawn. You should lend him to me, Claire.”
The tremor that ran through Ramiel was palpable at Claire’s back. She smiled. “I’m short staffed as it is. I couldn’t possibly spare him.”
“Just as well. He needs a strong hand.” Malphas’s face fell into carefully crafted disappointment, maternal and knowing. “Either way, I’m not sure an angel has the credentials. What do you know about Lirene’s Eighth Circle Artifice Bond?”
Claire’s eyes flew to the untidy pile of artifacts she’d pilfered from
the Arcane Wing, and her stomach dropped. She immediately knew where this was going even as Rami faltered. “I . . . I know danger when it must be contained.”
Malphas made a clicking noise with her tongue. “Oh, sweet, sweet Ramiel.” She studied her nails before turning her attention back to Claire. “He’s an angel with not an ounce of guile. The artifacts would eat him up on day one. We need someone with the acumen to deal with trickster artifacts. The strength to bring them to heel. Someone who has experienced the finer betrayals in life.”
Claire pursed her lips. “I said no demons, Malphas.”
“No demons. I had a different, reasonably intelligent mortal in mind.”
Malphas’s meaning was impossible to dodge, but Claire tried anyway. “I already have a position and responsibilities. I am Hell’s librarian.”
Then Malphas gave her a coin-flip smile, half-pitying and half-pleased, as she made Claire’s veins run cold with two words.
“Are you?”
The air stole out of her lungs and they ached. Claire refused to flinch from Malphas’s predatory stillness, but she ran her fingers idly over the paste brush still in her hands, tracing the wood against her calluses. When had she developed calluses? Bodies weren’t supposed to change in Hell. “Any soul sentenced to the Library remains until they’ve processed their sins.”
“Or failed in their duties.”
Claire clenched her jaw so hard it hurt. “I just repelled a hostile invasion of the Library.”
“By leaving a path of destruction through three realms and dead dreams in your wake. Even I was impressed, but death is my purview, not yours.” Malphas’s mood flipped. The jaws of the trap fell shut. “The librarian is supposed to protect the Library, not the other way around, child. How many books were lost because you went on this wild-goose chase? Leaving without permission on a stolen ghostlight alone would sentence any normal soul—”
“Oh, do save me the posturing.” Claire found herself on her feet, and Malphas raised a warning brow. “Lucifer knew what was happening. He had to. There were too many coincidences that had his tacit tolerance, if not approval. The codex pages. B—the collector and wards at Mdina. Deny it all you want—” She held up a hand, which only increased the murder in the old demon’s eyes. “But he kept you from the Library and sent no aid when we closed the wards. That alone says he knew and condoned what was going on. Hell broke faith with the Library first.”
