The dragging sound grew louder, wet and creaking. The floor beneath them shook. Beyond her veil of shadowstuff, Mia saw something vast move past, slithering on the stone. She caught the impression of a long, serpentine shape, dozens of blunt, brutish heads, lined with teeth. Moving between the shelves like some colossal caterpillar, spine arching as it dragged itself forward, snuffling the air. Mia clutched her dagger, shaking with the fear of it. Cursing herself a weakling. A child.
Tric reached back wordlessly, took hold of her hand and squeezed.
Minutes stretched into forever, there in that sweat-soaked dark. But whatever the thing was, it passed by without noticing them, slowly slithering off between the shelves. Mia and Tric huddled together, listening until it was out of earshot, silent as mice.
“
Now
can we get out of here?” Tric finally hissed.
“I’m thinking … yyyyes.”
Slinging the shadow cloak aside, she pulled Tric to his feet. Clambering up onto a shelf, Mia peered out into the sea of tomes, looking for an escape from the maze. She could see the athenaeum’s doors in the distance, blinked hard against some trick of the light. They looked
miles
away …
“Lookin’ frsum’thin?”
Mia cursed, almost jumping out of her skin as the voice spoke from the shadows. Tric whirled on the spot, saltlocks flying, blade in hand.
Mia heard a flintbox strike, saw flame reflected on impossibly thick spectacles, two shocks of white hair. A plume of cinnamon-scented smoke drifted into the air, and Chronicler Aelius stepped into the light, wheeling a wooden trolley stacked dangerously high with books. A small plaque on its snout was marked
RETURNS
.
“Maw’s teeth, does
everyone
around here walk on fucking tiptoe?” Tric asked.
The old man grinned white, exhaled gray. “Excitable one, aren’t you?”
“What do you bloody expect? Did you see that thing?”
Aelius blinked. “Eh?”
“That monster. That thing! What the ’byss was it?”
The old man shrugged. “Bookworm.”
“Book…”
“… worm.” Aelius nodded. “That’s what I call ’em, anyways.”
“Them?” Mia was incredulous.
“O, aye. There’s a few living in here. That was just a little one.”
“
Little one
?” Tric shouted.
The old man squinted through the pall of smoke. “O, aye. Very excitable.”
“You let something like that roam around your library?”
Aelius shrugged. “First off, it’s not
my
library. It belongs to Our Lady of Blessed Murder. I’m just the one who chronicles what’s innit. And I don’t
let
the bookworms roam around, they just …
do
.” The old man shrugged. “Funny old place, this.”
“Funny…,” Mia breathed.
“Well, not haha funny, obviously.”
Aelius plucked another cigarillo from behind his ear. Lighting it on his own, he held it out to the girl with ink-stained fingers.
“Smoke?”
The fear still coiled in Mia’s belly, her nerves in tatters. Perhaps a cigarillo would calm her down. And so, as the old man grinned, she mooched across the aisle and took the smoke with trembling fingers. They stood there for long, silent moments, Mia savoring the taste of the sugarpaper on her lips as her pulse finally slowed to somewhere near normal. Blowing plumes in Tric’s direction, and smirking as he wrinkled his nose and coughed.
“Good smokes, these,” she finally said.
“Aye.”
“Don’t recognize the maker’s mark, though.”
“He’s dead.” Aelius shrugged. “Don’t make ’em like this anymore.”
“Like these books?”
“Eh?”
Mia motioned to the shelves. “I recognize some of the titles. They aren’t supposed to exist. It makes sense now I think about it. This is a Church to the goddess of murder.”
Tric blinked as realization dawned. “So Niah’s library is filled with books that have died?”
Aelius looked at the pair through the smoke, slowly nodded.
“Some,” he finally said. “Some are books that were burned. Or forgotten ages past. Some never got the chance to live at all. Abandoned or half-imagined or just too frightening to begin. Memoirs of murdered tyrants. Theorems of crucified heretics. Masterpieces of geniuses who ended before their time.”
Mia looked around the shelves. Shaking her head. What wonders were hidden in these forgotten and unborn pages? What horrors?
“And the … worms?” she exhaled.
“Not sure where they’re from, to be honest.” Aelius shrugged. “Maybe one of the books? Things in these pages don’t always
stay
on the pages, if you get my drift. They only come out if they think the words are in danger. Or if they get, y’know … hungry.”
“What do they eat?” Tric asked.
The old man fixed the boy in his stare. “What do you reckon?”
“We’ve been here nearly four months.” Mia dragged deep on her cigarillo. “You don’t think this is the kind of thing the Ministry should mention on your first turn? ‘O, by the by, Acolytes, there’s these colossal fucking wormthings that live in the library, so for Maw’s sake, get your books back on time’?”
“What if more acolytes sneak in here alone?” Tric asked. “Mouser’s contest earns us six marks for every book stolen from the athenaeum.”
“Well, Mouser’s a bit of bastard, isn’t he?” Aelius said.
“What would happen if someone actually broke in here and tried to lift one?”
The old man smiled. “What do you reckon?”
Tric gawped. “Madness…”
“Look, the worms only bother folk who mess with the words. And if you’re fool enough to go faffing about with books like these, you deserve what you get. And aside all that, I
did
warn you.” Aelius blew a smoke ring at Mia’s face. “Told you when we first met that depending what aisle you walked down, you might never be seen again.”
“All right, then, for future reference, which aisles should we avoid?” the girl asked.
“It changes.” The old man shrugged. “This whole place changes time to time. New books appearing every other turn. Others moving to places I didn’t put them. Sometimes I find whole sections I never knew existed.”
“And you’re supposed to chronicle all this?”
Aelius nodded. “Bugger of a job, really.”
“You could get some help?” Tric offered.
“I had four assistants, once. Didn’t go so well.”
“Why? What happened to them?”
The old man looked at the boy sidelong. Three voices rang in the gloom simultaneously.
“
What do you reckon?
”
Mia blew a lungful of pale gray into the silence.
“… I don’t suppose there are any books on darkin in here, are there?”
The chronicler glanced down at her shadow. Back up to her eyes. “Why?”
“Is that a no?”
“It’s a ‘why.’ Wonderful thing about a library like this. Any book that ever was or wasn’t written is going to be in here eventually. Trouble is finding the bloody things. Lot of effort to look for something specific. And sometimes these books get chips on their shoulders. The burned ones ’specially. Sometimes they don’t
want
to be found.”
Mia felt hope sinking in her breast. She looked at Tric, who shrugged helplessly.
“But,” the old man said, looking her up and down. “You’ve got the look of a girl who’s no stranger to the page. I can tell. You’ve got words in your soul.”
“Words in my soul?” Mia scoffed. “‘
Burn After Reading
’?”
“Listen, girl,” Aelius sniffed. “The books we love, they love us back. And just as we mark our places in the pages, those pages leave their marks on us. I can see it in you, sure as I see it in me. You’re a daughter of words. A girl with a story to tell.”
“They don’t tell stories about Red Church disciples, Chronicler,” Mia said. “No songs sung for us. No ballads or poems. People live and die in the shadows, here.”
“Well, maybe here’s not where you’re supposed to be.”
She looked up sharply at that. Eyes narrowed in the smoke.
“Anyways.” The old man pushed himself off the shelf and sighed. “I’ll keep an eye out. And if I find a book about darkin worth reading, I’ll pass it along. Fair?”
“… Fair.” Mia bowed. “My thanks, Chronicler.”
“You two had best be off. And me besides. Too many books. Too few centuries.”
The old man escorted Mia and Tric through the labyrinth of shelves, trundling his
RETURNS
trolley and trailing a thin line of sugar-scented smoke all the way to the doors. And though the distance had looked like miles to Mia, they arrived at the exit in a handful of minutes, the forest of paper and words left far behind them.
“Cheerio.”
Nodding to them both, Aelius smiled and closed the doors without a sound.
Tric turned to her with a crooked grin. “Words in your soul, eh?”
“O, fuck off.”
The boy spread his arms, loudly proclaiming, “A girl with a story to tell!”
Mia aimed a hard punch, right into Tric’s bicep. The boy flinched as Mia cursed, jarring her injured elbow. Tric raised both his fists, threw a few sparring punches toward her head as she slapped him off, aiming a boot at his hindquarters as he turned away. And together, the pair wandered off into the darkness.
She resisted the urge to take the boy’s hand again.
Just barely.
CHAPTER 22
P
OWER
She was fourteen years old the last time the suns fell from the sky.
The greatest wordsmiths of the Republic have never truly captured the beauty of a full Itreyan sunsset. The blood stench wafting over Godsgrave streets as Aa’s priests sacrifice animals in the thousands, beseeching the God of Light to return soon. The bloody glow of Saan on the horizon, colliding with Saai’s pale blue, tumbling further into a sullen indigo. It takes three turns for the light to fully die. Three turns of prayer, slaughter and budding hysteria until the Mother of Night briefly reclaims dominion of the sky.
And then, the truedark Carnivalé
begins.
Mia woke to the sound of revelry. The constant
popopopop
of fireworks from the Iron Collegium, meant to frighten the Maw back below the horizon. She stretched out her hand, watched the shadows play. Feeling the power that had been growing inside her these last few turns finally blooming. With a wave of her hand, a tendril of shadow flipped an entire stack of books into the air, scattering the tomes across the room. At her whim, more shadows reached out, putting each book back in its proper place. She opened her bedroom door with a glance. Dressed without lifting a finger.
“…
bravo…
,” Mister Kindly had said.
“… if only i had hands to applaud…”
Mia smacked her backside. “I’d settle for lips to kiss my sweet behind.”
“…
i would have to find it first…
”
“Arses are like wine, Mister Kindly. Better too little than too much.”
“…
a beauty
and
a philosopher. be still, my beating heart…
”
The not-cat looked down at its translucent chest.
“…
o, wait…
”
The girl checked the knives at her belt, in her boots, tucked up her sleeve. She was a scrap of a thing, crooked fringe and hollow cheeks, full of all the confidence fourteen years in the world brings. Listening downstairs, she heard Old Mercurio’s familiar murmur, swapping gossip with one of his frequent not-customers. The old man wasn’t one for revelry. Unlike every other resident of Godsgrave, her master would be staying off the streets tonights. He had eyes aplenty out there already.
“…
you insist on doing this, then…
?”
She looked to her friend. All trace of jest draining from her face, leaving it hard and pale.
“This is my best chance. I’ve never felt as strong as I have in truedark. If I’m ever going to get in there, it’s tonights.”
“…
you should tell the old man…
”
“He’d try to talk me out of it.”
“…
do you not ask yourself why…
?”
“There’s no guards in there during truedark, Mister Kindly.”
“…
because the descent will begin soon. hundreds of prisoners slaughtering each other for the right to leave the philosopher’s stone. do you really wish to be in there with them…
?”
“Four years, Mister Kindly. Four years they’ve been locked in that hole. My brother learned to walk in a prison cell. I don’t know the last time my mother saw the suns. What have I been training for all these years, if not this? I have to get them out of there.”
“…
you are a fourteen-year-old girl, mia…
”
“And is it the fourteen-year-old part, or the girl part that troubles you?”
“…
mia—
”
“No,” she snapped. “This ends tonights. On my side or in my way?”
The not-cat sighed.
“…
you know where I stand. always…
”
“Then let’s stop talking about it, shall we?”
Out the window. Onto the street. The crush and revelry. Everyone in their Carnivalé
masks; beautiful
dominos
and fearsome
voltos
and laughing
punchinellos
. The girl slipped through the throng, a harlequin’s face over her own, cloak over her head. Past the sighing lovers on the Bridge of Vows, the hucksters on the Bridge of Coin, down to the broken shore. Slinging the canvas off her stolen gondola, she stretched her arms and closed her eyes. Darkness slithered from the nooks and crannies, wrapping the girl and boat in a shroud of night.
Hidden in the darkness, she punted across the Bay of Butchers, under a walkway on the Bridge of Follies, shifting and rolling on the rising tide.
1
Slinging her cloak aside as she made for the open sea, hours turning by, aiming for the foreboding spike of stone thrust up from the ocean’s face. The hole in which her mother and brother had languished for four long years at Julius Scaeva’s command, hopeless and helpless.