‘What happened to them?’ Fulcrom asked.
‘One of them was murdered,’ Lan said. ‘She was murdered because a group of men sexually assaulted her, then found her out. She was dragged into a nearby marsh and stabbed repeatedly — just for not fitting into a category; or perhaps more specifically, that she was not what they were after. The men were repulsed by her. Sickened because she was different.’ Lan was aware she was speaking in a drone, but she was consciously washing the emotion from her mind — a self-preservation tool. ‘This was in some small town that the circus travelled through. The other girl, she saw the assault, but didn’t report it at first — she was in hiding. By the time the circus moved on it was too late to do anything about it. You yourself must know how these disconnected communities can be sometimes.’
‘How did you find out — about the murder, I mean?’
‘The other girl — well, she eventually caught up with the show. That was many weeks later. She pleaded with our owner to return, to report the crime to military installations along the route, but he wasn’t interested. Said he’d had a lot of his retinue die on him, what was one more? I was too scared to force anything to happen. The other girl, she ran away. I never saw her after that. I still feel guilty about it, and such shame, but I wanted to hide myself as much as I could. I didn’t want the same to happen to me.’
Lan peered up at him, and he seemed uncertain of how to react. He shook his head and held her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Lan.’
Lan didn’t know about that. Life was certainly easier than before.
‘People fear what they don’t understand,’ Fulcrom continued. ‘I’ll freely admit it is difficult — and more so — for your… you…’ He shook his head. ‘Even I struggle. I understand, to some extent — not that it helps — since my family spent a year in one of the smaller towns, which was hell if you were a rumel. We faced threats, our doors were kicked in during the night, my father had eggs thrown at him when he went to work in the mornings. They didn’t welcome what they didn’t understand. They thought we were bizarre monsters, so we came back to Villjamur, where there’s a great mix of peoples — garudas, rumels, humans — people seem to get on better. There’s more understanding here, for all its sins.’
‘At least you can freely be a rumel and be accepted by law,’ Lan said. ‘Hell, you lot are mostly the law — why is that?’
He laughed at that. ‘A quirk of old doctrines. Rumels live far longer than humans, and experience is required for the job. That’s what we tell ourselves, anyway, but it’s also because thousands of years ago, so the history goes, there was a great tension between the species. We rumels were given high positions of legal office to placate our needs against the many human rulers. It forced us both to be civilized to each other — and I guess it worked.’
‘There’s not much in the way of legal protection for the people I used to be. The law doesn’t even recognize shades of gender — it’s very black and white, but luckily our culture is such a wreckage that anyone can change who they are in a heartbeat with a forged document in their hands. No one asks questions, no one wants proof — apart from getting into Villjamur.’
‘You can make your mark, here in the city,’ Fulcrom concluded. ‘Life is tough for all of us, in our own ways, and if it wasn’t you who received these powers it would have been someone else eventually. You’ve been chosen because of your proven adaptability: you’re well known in cultist circles — they knew they could rely on your body. And those people who were used for research — there’s nothing folk like us can do about it. Choose your battles, but stay with us, Lan. You can choose to be a force for good.’
She didn’t say anything.
Fulcrom announced that it was time to go. He said something about having business with a priest, and smiled earnestly. Before he left, Lan — conscious she was going to do it — gave him a peck on the cheek and whispered her thanks. It seemed to disarm Fulcrom totally, and as he stuttered away through the snowy streets, she felt shocked at how forward she could be.
She liked the sensation.
*
Ulryk was waiting patiently on the steps of the Inquisition headquarters as fat flakes of snow drifted down around him. Fulcrom marvelled at how peaceful he seemed to be, despite the flurry of citizens and the bustle of Villjamur.
‘Good afternoon, Ulryk,’ Fulcrom called out.
The priest turned and gave a welcoming smile. ‘A most delightful day, investigator.’
‘You can tell you’ve not been in the city long. The citizens are sick of all this cold weather and snow.’
They moved across the city at a leisurely pace, and Fulcrom showed him where some of the smaller libraries were, as they headed to the largest in the city, around the corner from the Astronomer’s Glass Tower. Ulryk gasped as they entered a vast courtyard of glass flowers, in a variety of colours, but mainly blues and purples. Giant petals and heart-shaped leafs were glittering.
‘This is phenomenally beautiful!’ he sighed, clasping his hands together. ‘How old is this garden?’
Fulcrom chuckled at his reaction. ‘A few hundred years, more or less. They were built before the great Varltung Uprising.’
A couple were walking arm in arm to one of the benches at the far end of the courtyard, where they sat enveloped in each other’s attention. Rising up around the scene were some of the finest buildings in the city, limestone houses with vast windows that overlooked the glass flowers. Some were glowing warmly with firelight, and it highlighted just how cold it was outside.
‘Here it is,’ Fulcrom said. At the far end of the courtyard was the central library of Villjamur, indicated by a wide-arched entrance at the top of a stairway.
There was a member of the city guard standing at the bottom, blond-haired and round-faced, clutching his sword with one hand and gazing sternly at some point in the distance.
‘Sele of Urtica,’ the guard said.
‘Sele of Urtica,’ Fulcrom replied, flashing his medallion. ‘I didn’t realize they were guarding this place as well?’
‘Every major landmark in the city is being guarded now,’ the officer replied. ‘Someone’s here day in, day out.’
Fulcrom nodded and continued up the steps with the priest. ‘This is the place you’ll find the oldest books in the city,’ Fulcrom said to him. ‘There are a thousand legal texts going back thousands of years, which we in the Inquisition are forced to use from time to time. But I’ll see that the librarians treat you right — they can be a brutal bunch.’
*
Four storeys high, and banking into the distance over an uneven topography, the library was intimidating in size and bewildering in its layout. Lit by glass lanterns, spaced regularly at every fifteen feet, it looked like a settlement all of its own. Thousands of books bound in varying shades of leather were stored here, and among them Ulryk seemed more relaxed than usual, as if finally having returned home. A few custodians shifted intermittently like ghosts between shelving units and smaller, more concealed vaults of books. Fulcrom knew of many more rooms underground, too — sepulchres containing texts sacred to the Jorsalir church, as well as tomes in which the foundation of the Empire had been detailed. Some were said to hold clay tablets and books written in rare script that no one alive could decipher.
Fulcrom flashed his Inquisition medallion at the main desk and had a quiet word with the librarian. Presently, Ulryk was granted access to all areas of the library including sensitive areas normally open to only those in the Inquisition or those attached to the Council. But when offered a custodian to guide him around, the priest declined. Ulryk’s only question was the location of the scriptorium, the room in which texts were copied from language to language, and distributed across the Archipelago.