What did Lady Kevarian want with him? Hardly the pleasure of his company.
Forced idleness was a torment in itself. His hands itched. He could be helping Tara, fixing boilers, serving his dead Lord. Instead, he watched shadows on the wall, and contemplated dandelions.
Not for the first time did his eyes flick to the frosted glass door of the Ambassador’s office. The door wasn’t thick, and its lower half was silvered. If he drew close, crouched down, and pressed his ear to the glass, his silhouette would be invisible from the other side.
He tipped some ash into the dandelion vase, bent low, and approached the door. He heard Lady Kevarian’s voice, and another, deep and rolling like distant thunder.
He pressed his ear to the cool, silvered glass.
“… place me in a complicated position,” said the thunderstorm. “There’s much to your story I don’t understand.”
“Much I don’t understand as well, Ambassador, but everything I’ve told you is true. I can confirm it.”
The storm rumbled, but said nothing.
“I would not, of course, ask you to accept my word with no evidence.”
“Certainly not.”
Her voice sank to a whisper. Abelard leaned against the door as if to press his ear through it. Then the latch gave way, and the door swung in onto nothingness.
Abelard tumbled into a shadowy pit, like night without stars, the way the universe had looked before man opened his eyes, before the gods breathed life into the void. This darkness was deeper even than the darkness into which Ms. Kevarian had thrust him, had flashed with red. Falling, he felt an unexpected warmth at his back.
He gulped reflexively for air but found none to breathe, and would have perished had the dark not broken and reformed around him. Or had his overtaxed mind simply recast the scene into something it could comprehend?
He flailed to find his balance on the carpet. Cool, soothing air rushed back into starved lungs, and sunlight startled his eyes.
He stood in an office, more richly furnished than Cardinal Gustave’s. Chairs of soft leather with silver studs, oak bookshelves. Ms. Kevarian stood to his left.
At the far end of the room, behind a polished desk of what looked to be pure magesterium wood, sat a towering skeleton. Standing, it would have been over seven feet tall; seated in a broad chair of leather and iron, it was nearly Abelard’s height. A hooked silver tab protruded from the hole where its nose had once been, supporting a pair of half-moon spectacles. Sparks like distant stars glittered in the eyeholes of the blanched skull. Two arms rested on the skeleton’s lap, and two more, smaller and grafted below the first pair, were busily taking notes on a yellow pad of paper with a silver-nibbed pen.
“Lord James Regulum, Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Deathless Kings of the Northern Gleb,” said Lady Kevarian with a slight touch of humor, “may I present Novice Technician Abelard of the Church of Kos Everburning.”
“So,” the skeleton said, and from its voice Abelard realized it was not an it, but a he, “you’re the little monk Elayne has brought us.”
“Priest, actually,” Abelard said. “And engineer.” The skeleton—Lord James whatever—did not reply, nor did Ms. Kevarian. Both regarded him with a strange intensity. “Ah. May I ask a question?”
“You have asked one already, Engineer-priest, and you may ask another.”
“You, um. Don’t have any lips. Or lungs. How are you … talking?”
Lord James grinned. He did not need to expend any particular effort to do so. “Good question.”
Before he could say anything else, Abelard fainted.
13
The reference librarian looked up from his paperwork and saw a living statue of a woman sandblasted from black glass. He swallowed, and slid the papers into a drawer.
Good afternoon, the Blacksuit said with a voice soft as distant surf. I am looking for a book.
“Ah.” After this initial exhalation, the librarian took the better part of a minute to realize he hadn’t said anything further. “Of course you are.” A moment ago he had been waiting through the pleasant, slow half hour before the end of the afternoon shift, answering patrons’ easy questions to relieve the boredom. Blacksuits never had easy questions. “What do you need?”
Justice requires the following redacted materials, the Blacksuit said, and slid a scrap of paper across the counter.
The librarian, whose name was Owen, tried to slip the paper out from under the Blacksuit’s fingertips. It ripped a little, but did not move.
These materials are to be provided without notifying any parties that have placed requests or holds upon them.
“I don’t think I’m allowed to…” The protest died on Owen’s tongue.
Speed is a priority. All is in the service of Justice.
The Blacksuit released the paper into Owen’s grip.
“Yes, ma’am.”
*
In three hours, Abelard had met more Craftsmen and dignitaries than he expected, or desired, to see ever again. Lord James the skeleton had been the most striking, but not the most unnerving. “What happened to that last one?” he asked Lady Kevarian when they returned to her waiting carriage.
“Dame Alban has spent the last half-century experimenting with alternatives to the skeletal phase of a Craftswoman’s late life.”
“So she’s turned herself into a statue?”
“Inhabited a statue, more precisely. A brilliant idea: stone has its own soul, and an artist’s skill invests it with more. Not enough to sustain human consciousness indefinitely, but if you have competent artisans and you’re willing to pay, you can have any body you wish, until it crumbles.”
“All of those statues, on the walls and everything…”
“Any one could host her.”
“They weren’t all women.”
“What made you think Dame Alban was?”
“Or human.”
Lady Kevarian shrugged.
“She’s a ghost? Moving from statue to statue?”
“Hardly. One keeps one’s body around, even if one doesn’t spend much time inside it. It is the greatest gift of order and power humans receive from the universe.”
“You still consider yourself human, then.”
“Somewhat.”
He wasn’t sure how to respond to that statement, so he ignored it. “Dame Alban, or Sir Alban, or whatever. Where is her body?”
“You remember the remarkable sculpture we saw upon first entering her chambers?”
“The thinking skeleton?” His eyes widened. “No.”
“Yes.”
“It was lacquered black.”
“And you’re wearing clothes.” Their carriage slowed to navigate around an accident ahead. “Abelard, these people have lived in Alt Coulumb for forty years—longer, in some cases. They’re no more strangers to this city than you and your Blacksuit friend. Before the events of the last few days, did you not feel the slightest interest in them?”
“It all seems … unnatural.”
“Whereas using the love of your god as a heat source for steam power is perfectly normal.”
“Yes,” he said, confused.
“Before this case is over, Abelard, you may have to choose between the city you believe you inhabit, and Alt Coulumb as it exists in truth. What choice will you make?”
Abelard opened his mouth, intending to say, the Lord will guide me. He caught himself, and settled instead for, “The right one, I hope.”
“So do I.”
*
A Blacksuit left the library carrying a stack of scrolls, and Catherine Elle returned a few minutes later through the same door, rumpled, trembling like a dry leaf in a high wind, and bearing a parcel in her jacket.
“Are you okay?” Tara asked after they retired to a corner out of the reference librarian’s line of sight. Here, she could peruse the redacted scrolls without risk of discovery or interruption.