Nerren gave her a beady look. “Section C. Do you want a coffee before you start?”
“Perhaps a stiff brandy.” She hadn’t meant it to sound quite so sour.
In the weapons room, Mercy stood considering her options.
The bow: taut as a razor’s edge, sensitive as the antenna of a moth. The bow, all gleaming silver-black, called to Mercy and she whispered to it, “Wait. Not long. I have to be sure.”
There were other bows, but only one that spoke to Mercy and of course, one could take none other.
It must be strange, Mercy reflected, to be someone to whom no weapons spoke. But then again, such people probably didn’t become Librarians.
The sword: a thin-whipping rapier, also in black, also in silver, with a curling intricacy of guard fretworked in Kells-coils. Old Irish, from the look of it. Mercy had not seen this blade before, it was newly arrived from the lands of Earth, and its slender length sparkled with stories. It spoke to Mercy of moorland, peat-dark under a new moon, of bogs of sooty water into which horses vanished, of cold high cliffs and seas like thunder. A broch, rising out of the heather, grey as an old bone, haunted by the ghosts of the warrior dead.
“You,” Mercy murmured. “Might take you.”
A knife: short-bladed, stoical, with little to say. Mercy passed it by, but not because of its relative silence.
She paused before the guns, but guns boasted too much for Mercy’s liking. They were not quite a woman’s weapon, she always thought, though she knew those who considered differently. They shouted to her of their kills: street kills, Northern Ireland, in Spain, the islands of the Small Realms, Nicaragua, Los Angeles. They had their own legends and she did pause before a musket, speaking of blood and bayou.
“Not in this day and age,” Mercy said aloud. She’d probably blow her hand off if she touched the thing. She was almost at the end of the armoury now, by the high windows that looked out over the Citadel as if the presence of the weapons alone was sufficient to protect it. The rows of weaponry and munitions stretched back to infinity-point, the armoury far larger from within than from without, as befitted the nature of the Library. Mercy walked back to the Irish rapier, said, “I’ll take you, then.” To the bow, she said, “Next time.” The bow acquiesced with grace; she would have expected no less from it. But she had a feeling that the sword was right for the day, without knowing why. If she knew why, the story would be over.
The sword had a scabbard—ebony leather, slightly worn but carefully tooled. She strapped it around her waist, slid the sword inside and walked from the armoury, taking care to bolt and bar and spell-ward the door as she did so. Things had been stolen before and not just weapons. The sword tapped lightly against her boots as she walked, a deathwatch clicking.
Section C was located up ten flights of stairs, the winding steps giving a panoramic view of the Library entrance hall below. She could see Nerren’s bent head, an ink blot against the marble of her desk. From this height, she was level with the bird-spirits: their shadowy wings beating in ceaseless rotation. They did not appear unduly concerned, but this meant little. Nerren and Mercy had long since given up using the bird-spirits as a barometer of danger, their canaries in the mine.
Finally, she reached the tenth floor landing and paused before the door. Moving with great care, one hand on the hilt of the Irish sword, Mercy leaned an ear to the door.
Inside, something was whispering.
• Two •
The man stood at the window, staring out over the fragile scattering of roses in Citadel Square. He watched as a golem trudged across the flagstones, the spell parchment protruding from its half-open mouth like the tip of a tongue. It carried a lead box, something from the Court’s own vaults, and Jonathan Deed wondered idly who had sent what to whom. As Abbot General of the Court, he preferred to know as much as possible about what was going on in the Court. How else could he fulfil his office as the Court’s Abbot? More importantly, how could he attain his own goals?
Thick walls and thick glass cut out the city’s murmur, the creak of the spell-vanes on the roofs above. But his office in the Court was not far from the Library, and Deed could almost hear the weight of history, years of hushed whispers in marble corridors, years of policy-making. But now the Skein were gone. Deed smiled, thinking of that. Over there, the Librarians believed they were the ones running the world—and so they had been, but only on the microcosm. The macrocosm, ah, now that was something else entirely.
“Abbot General,” the woman said. “What is it? You’re making me nervous.” She stood, just inside the door, her feet on the outer border of the Persian carpet.
“Perhaps you should be nervous,” he said, without turning his head. He tapped the tightly-rolled scroll on the study’s windowsill. “It’s falling to us, Darya. Did you ever think you’d see that day?”
“No. But maybe—you did?” There was the faintest trace of accusation in her voice, and he grinned, turning to her at last. Amusing, how she tried not to recoil.
“
Darya.
” His voice was a caressing purr. “Mage Nem. You ought to be proud.”
“I
am
proud.” There was only a little hesitation in her voice and that was good enough. For the moment. Later on, maybe Darya would have to be taken down a peg or two, but there was no rush. Plenty more apprentices waiting in the wings, after all. The Sept had made sure of that in its breeding programme down the long years. Thinking of that, Deed studied her as she sat on the divan, deliberately not looking at him. He knew he frightened her—Abbots General were supposed to be intimidating—but, of course, that wasn’t the whole story. He could see the traces of it in her angular face: typically Northern Quarter with the high arched bones of her cheeks, the wide-set blue eyes, and square jaw. She looked so demure in her neat black gown, with the silver charms and wards dangling along the chain of her sigilometer. But there was more than demureness behind her face if you knew where to look, just as there was more than the human behind his own. As the sunlight grew stronger, you could see the silver light at the back of her eyes, a faint mirrorglow. And for a moment, the bones of her face seemed to shift into something not-human, so subtle that he doubted anyone not of the Sept would have noticed it. Naturally, if you looked at her with the sight-beyond-sight, the difference was a great deal more marked: the aura so indigo that it was nearly black, with a sparkle at the edges like distant starlight.
Disir.
He doubted whether any humans other than the Court and their Adepts, the Sept, even remembered the word, let alone what it meant. Not even the Librarians: it was too long ago, too far in time and space. Poor Darya. You don’t like what you are, do you? But you couldn’t run from it, couldn’t change it, and why would you want to? thought Deed. It wasn’t as though you were something banal—a wampyr, for instance. Something with
penalties,
whereas all the Sept had to deal with was an unreasonable amount of power. Who could possibly have a problem with that?
“Abbot General? Has something amused you?” Darya asked, and for a second there was a feral flash in her sea-coloured eyes.
“A great many things amuse me,” Deed told her. “But now, I need you to do something. A nice little trip to the Library.”
She was looking at him now. “The Library? But—”
“No one will
know,
Darya. You don’t have
disir
emblazoned all over your pass card. They don’t have magicians working on the front desk.” He smiled again. It wasn’t quite true, but she didn’t need to know that, and Deed was all about the need to know. “Typical Librarians. Always overstretched. No one will know who you are.”
Or what.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to be charming, Darya, which shouldn’t be too difficult.” He smiled, winningly. “I want you to make an appointment with a gentleman named Jehan True. I’ve spoken to him in the guise of one of my other personas, a professor from the Spellmarkt, and mentioned my delightful young cousin, Mage Darya Nem, all the way from the Northern Quarter and keen to make a start on her postgraduate research. A young lady who is very eager to see certain elements of the Hidden Collection. I’ve said nothing about you being of the Court, don’t worry. Anyway, in the highly unlikely event that you were troubled by a surfeit of conscience, I
am
a professor and you are in many ways a student.”
Darya looked doubtful, but Deed knew this was due to caution, not inexperience. “You’ve done this before, Darya. And so well, too.” He pitched his voice lower, verging on the hypnotic, and though she was of disir blood she failed to notice it.
Darya nodded, once, as mechanically as a golem, and rose. He held the door open for her as she left and watched her recede down the hallway, her heels clicking on the old wooden floor.
Outside, the sun had gone behind a cloud. The city was once more grey and cold. The roses looked out of place, as though they had sprung before their season. Deed felt himself strip down with the day, his face becoming less human, closer to his ravening ancestry. He knew that if he looked in a mirror right now, the bones would be blade-sharp, the eyes behind the expensive rimless spectacles milky or night-dark, the shadow of the unhuman rippling beneath the skin. He preferred it this way: it was sometimes difficult to maintain the façade. But just in case, he took a breath and settled back into the human once more—a man still relatively young, snow-white undershirt, small starched ruff, black tunic, everything perfectly correct. The distinguished contributor to distinguished literary collections. The distinguished Abbot General of the Court. He liked that adjective. What could be more suitable?
It was time to make another attempt. Far away, he could feel the planets moving into alignment, Jupiter a great lamp in the heavens. The familiar aspects of the World Tree were briefly imposed on his vision, with himself surrounded by the sphere of Malkuth at the base of the tree. The Dead Road beckoned beyond the confines of the city of Worldsoul, beyond the Liminality itself. For a moment, the whole universe glittered around him, gloriously outlined. He glimpsed Earth, and Earth’s moon; the planets beyond in the realm to which Worldsoul adjoined, a dimly-seen neighbour, visible only in humanity’s dreams.
Deed raised a hand. The plain iron band on his index finger flashed. Deed stepped through the hole created in the air, leaving the opulence of his study behind.
Beyond, it was difficult to breathe. The Dead Road seemed even narrower than before, even more restricted. It wasn’t the only storyway, by no means the only way into the nevergone, but it was one of the most dangerous. Deed fought for breath, ramped up the entry spell but felt his features once more slip and slide. In the formal suit, his limbs thinned, sharpened, elongated, his clothes shifting with the change. The starched ruff bit into his throat like sharp little teeth. He tried to get a glimpse, at least, of what he sought but—as ever—it eluded him. Frantically, he parted the swirling vapours with his hands, catching snatches of vision—a white city beside an azure sea, a long reach of birch forest—but not a glimpse of the thing he was looking for, the thing he knew was finally within his reach.
Suddenly, amazingly, there it was: an immense pale-columned building, the Grecian roof slightly scorched with fire but still bearing the golden letters on its architrave. The Great Library, in sight at last, but in another time than his own. Deed opened his mouth to speak the first words of the spell—
But then the world woke up. It flung him backwards, the mist swirling up and filling his mouth so that he choked. He was hurled back onto the Persian carpet and it was fortunate, he thought a moment later, that the windows were indeed so thick, for the silence swallowed his roar of fury.
• Three •
Shadow, stepping into the Medina, glimpsed herself reflected in the shining surface of a copper pot. In the curving metal, she looked like a fragment of sky, no features visible, but Shadow didn’t believe in taking chances. She thickened the azure veil a little further. Suleiman had magics learned in the Great Desert, conjurations stolen from the back alleys of Cairo and the cedar groves outside Baalbec, and from worlds other and further than Earth. One of those magics was said to be the charism of discernment of disguises. A charism perhaps, but Shadow doubted that it came from God.
She wasn’t in disguise, not really. The veil permitted a greater degree of communion with the divine, shielding her from the invasions of the worlds, unless she chose to invite someone in. To an ordinary person, it would look like just another veil: its secrets were well hidden. Shadow had confided the central mystery to only one other person: Mariam Shenudah. Because if something ever did go wrong with the veil, Mariam would know what to do.
Another twist to the magic of the veil, just in case. Shadow, looking into the surface of the copper pot, saw a glisten on the air, a smear on the shining metal. Only then did she glide away, keeping at first to the old walls on the outer perimeter of the Medina, occasionally running a hand across the cool stone to see if there were any traces.
There were not. She planned to spiral in towards the Has El Zindeh, keeping south-west-north, using left-hand magic. That had its own penalties, but Suleiman deployed it, so why should she hesitate?
Fire with fire, my Shah.
Shadow passed ovens smouldering with the smell of newly baked flatbread, slipped past golden mounds of turmeric and saffron, past baskets of glittering benzoin and crumbling myrrh, skirted jars of rosewater that sparkled in the lamplight. She would have liked to linger, especially around the conjuration stalls, but it was too risky. But Suleiman had said:
Meet me at noon.
The Medina, being roofed, was hidden from the sun, although when Shadow looked up she could see the old images of the constellations of Earth inscribed across the ceiling. In the western section of the Medina, the goddess Nuit’s body, bent like a bow, arched from floor to floor, carrying the stars within her. She disturbed Shadow, being a representation of a figure, and Shadow turned away, but not before she thought she saw Nuit’s painted smile. And here was further representation amid the sea-blue tiles: suns and moons and lions and deer, in endless procession over the Western Quarter’s door. Shadow bent her veiled head and passed them by. She circled away from the walls, passing deeper into the maze of the Medina. Here were the weapon makers: the blasting heat of forges, the hiss of metal into water. Shadow’s own blade had not come from here, so no whisper could betray her. Her knife, forged out of sunlight and moonlight, came from the Khaureg, the deep desert a long way away. Shadow fingered the gold and black hilt as she walked quickly past the weapon makers, still taking the small modest steps that would proclaim her housewife, not alchemist.