Knock Before Entering
The letters, also outlined in gilt, fairly jumped off the polished wood of the door. Directly below was a huge metal knocker resting on a metal plate. It looked to Mistaya as if it would take a fair-sized battering ram to knock the door down if it was secured.
Without hesitating Thom lifted the knocker and let it fall once. A silence followed, and then a rumbling bass voice replied from within, “You may enter, Thom.”
How the inhabitant knew who it was who’d come calling was a mystery to Mistaya, but Thom seemed undisturbed and pressed down on the door handle to release the latch.
The room they entered was large but not cavernous, and it in no way resembled the Stacks. Here the wood was polished to a high gloss, the walls decorated with paintings and tapestries, and the floor laid with rich carpet. The ceiling was much lower, but not so low as to make it feel as if it were pressing down, and there were slender stained-glass windows at the rear through which sunshine brightly shone in long, colorful streamers. A massive desk dominated the rear center of the room, its surface piled high with documents and artifacts of some sort. His Eminence sat comfortably behind it in a high-backed stuffed armchair, beaming out at them with a huge smile.
“Thom!” he exclaimed, as if surprised that it was the boy who had entered. Then he stood up and held out his arms in greeting. “Good morning to you!”
Mistaya didn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t exactly this unbridled display of camaraderie. Nor was Craswell Crabbit quite what she had envisioned. Sitting behind his desk, he looked fairly normal. But when he stood up he was well over seven feet tall, skeletal beyond simply lean or gaunt, a collection of bones held together by skin and ligaments. As if to emphasize how oddly thin he was, his head was at least two sizes too big for his shoulders, an oblong face suggesting that the obvious compression it had undergone hadn’t been quite enough to make up for the job done on the body. Because his legs and arms were rather crooked, even given the oddity of the rest of his body, the whole of his appearance was something rather like that of a praying mantis.
“Good morning, Your Eminence,” Thom replied promptly. Rather quickly, Mistaya thought, he led her forward to stand before the desk. “This is my sister, Ellice.”
“Ah, what a lovely child you are, Ellice!” the spider enthused, reaching out with one bony hand to take her own.
“Your Eminence,” she responded quickly, letting the hand he held hang limp as she gave him something between a bow and a curtsy.
“Come for a visit?” he pressed. “All the way from … ?”
“Averly Mills, Your Eminence,” she answered smoothly.
“Yes, that is the name. I’d forgotten.” He smiled. “Missing your brother, are you?”
She noticed now that his head was shaved of hair, but fine black stubble grew over his bald pate and along the smooth line of his angular jaw in a dark shadow that refused to be banished. His sharp eyes locked on her own, and she could feel them probing for information that she might not wish to give.
“Yes, Your Eminence,” she answered. “I thought perhaps I might be allowed to remain with him for a time. I am willing to work for my keep.”
“Oh, tut, tut, and nonsense!” the other exclaimed in mock horror. “We don’t treat our guests that way!” He paused, cocking his head at her. “Then again, we are short of helping hands just now, and our library reorganization clearly lacks the concerted effort it requires. Why, if not for your brother, we might not have made any progress at all!”
“Ellice is a good worker,” Thom cut in. “She can read and write and help me with the organizing. She would be an immense help.”
“I would be pleased to do whatever I can,” Mistaya affirmed quickly, trying out a smile on him.
His Eminence looked charmed in his praying-mantis sort of way. “How very gracious of you, Ellice! I would not ask it of you, but neither will I refuse the offer. You may begin work at once! Please consider yourself a part of our family while you are here. Thom, has she met everyone?”
“Mostly, Your Eminence,” the boy answered. “Pinch last night, some of the Throg Monkeys today, although I don’t know which ones or whether they even care. Not all of them, I’m sure. They seem to multiply daily. Anyway, thank you for allowing her to stay with me. I miss her every bit as much as she misses me.”
“Well, I am certain you do.” The oblong face tilted strangely, as if about to fall off its narrow perch. “Though you’ve never once mentioned her before, have you?”
Mistaya felt a chill go up her spine. But Thom simply gave that familiar shrug. “I never thought it important enough to speak about, Your Eminence. You have so much else with which to grapple that it never seemed appropriate to talk about myself.”
The tall man clapped his hands. “How very thoughtful of you, Thom. Indeed, you never disappoint me. Well, then. You’ve had your breakfast and taken a look around, Ellice?”
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
“Then I shall not keep you a moment longer. Your brother goes off to work and you must join him. We shall visit again, later. Goodbye for now.”
He gave her another smile and a perfunctory wave that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anything other than a dismissal. Giving deep bows and muttering their profuse thanks, the boy and the girl backed from the room and closed the door.
At once Thom put a finger to his lips. In silence, they retraced their steps back down the aisleway and to the front end of the Stacks. When they were safely clear of the walls and out in the open, Thom turned to her.
“What do you think now? Is he a noble of the realm?”
She made a rude sound and didn’t answer.
It was only a few minutes later, the boy and the girl gone by then, that a knock sounded in the wall of Craswell Crabbit’s office. His Eminence grunted and a hidden panel slid smoothly aside to admit Rufus Pinch. The hirsute little man trundled over to the side of the desk he couldn’t see over from the front and peered up accusingly at its occupant.
“Mr. Crabbit,” he greeted.
“Mr. Pinch, don’t call me that.”
Pinch ignored him. “Surely you don’t believe their story, do you?”
His Eminence smiled beatifically. “I tend not to believe anything anyone tells me, Mr. Pinch. That way I am never disappointed. Are we speaking of our Thom and his lovely sister, Ellice?”
“I don’t know who she is, but she’s not who she claims. You can be certain of that.”
“That, and much more, I think. But you are absolutely right. She isn’t who she claims. But then neither is he, in case it had escaped you.”
Pinch looked puzzled. “He isn’t?”
Craswell Crabbit steepled his fingers in front of him. “Do yourself a favor, Mr. Pinch. Don’t try to do the thinking in this partnership. Leave that to me. Stick with what works best for you. Spying. Keep an eye on those two and find out what they are up to.”
He looked deeply thoughtful as he paused. “Because they are almost certainly up to something.”
BACK IN THE STACKS
For the remainder of the day, Mistaya worked side by side with Thom in the dark and musty confines of the Stacks, cataloging and shelving the books that were stored there. Each book had to be removed, checked against a master list that His Eminence had supplied to Thom, cleaned and repaired as best as possible, and then returned to its space. The shelves themselves had to be scrubbed, since dust and grime had accumulated in clumps and layers thick enough to provide homes for nests of insects, which had long since gone condo. The work was slow and laborious, and by the end of the day they had barely completed one small section of the acres that required attention.
Of course, the task would have taken a dedicated crew of twenty able-bodied men and women as long as two years to complete, so they were somewhat at a disadvantage having only themselves and the completely unreliable Throg Monkeys as laborers. The annoying little creatures skulked around like evil weasels, appearing out of the gloom and then disappearing back into it once more, coming and going as they pleased. When they bothered to pass by, they regarded Thom with undisguised dislike and Mistaya with malevolent intent. Thom managed to get them to do some work, mostly the heavy lifting of the books from the shelves to the floor for easy reach, using the whistle they hated so to bring them to heel. But mostly they just drifted about, demonstrating no interest in the charge His Eminence, supposedly, had given them.