A long way, to the south and to the east. Longer than it looked. Mercy thought she could taste rain on the wind. She turned, pushed open the Library’s heavy bronze doors, and went inside.
There did not seem, at first, to have been any crises during the night. Good. The Elders had planned an inspection this morning and Mercy, Nerren, and their colleagues wanted everything to go smoothly. Things were quite unstable enough, Mercy thought, without the poor Elders having a conniption-at least, not more of one than they were having already.
However, the huge, echoing foyer of the Library was as austere and tranquil as ever; the smoke-dappled marble columns rising out of a floor so polished that it looked like a pool of grey-green water. Touches of silver-on lecterns, on the spine of the Great Book that stood on its plinth in the centre of the hall, on croziers and the Librarian’s Crown-caught the sunlight filtering in through glass that was stained black and white and grey; the windows being one of the few parts of the Library that were really new, untainted by ancient fire. Above, soaring above the motes of light and dust, flew the ghosts of birds.
“You’re early,” said Nerren, bustling out from behind the reception desk.
“I said I would be. Did anything-?”
“No.” Nerren’s brow creased. The Senior Librarian wore a man’s suit: narrow tapering trousers, cream silk shirt, a frock coat. A black curl of hair had been coaxed to rest on her brow; it looked varnished against her brown skin. Sigils glowed dark-bronze on cheeks and throat, in the manner of the Southern Quarter, but southerner though she was, Nerren had eyes like Mercy’s own; the same shape, the same shade. Dark and disapproving. Mercy sometimes wondered whether being a member of the Order of the Library had endowed her with a permanent frown. Now Nerren was frowning, too. Nerren added, in that beautiful musical voice with its accent of the Islands, “At least, not that I’m aware of. But I haven’t checked Section C.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure? Do you want some help before the Elders get here?”
“No, it’s all right. I’ll do it myself.” Mercy had entertained doubts about Section C for some weeks, and had not mentioned the extent of them to Nerren. The Senior Librarian had quite enough on her plate. But now she wondered whether Nerren knew anyway.
“There’s more. Bad news.” Nerren’s fluid voice was not suited to staccato, but it obviously matched her mood. “We’re due for a Citadel inspection as well. They’ll be coming on Third Day.”
“What, this Third Day?” Mercy stared at Nerren in dismay.
“Yes. That’s the whole point. Not to give us time to cover things up. I suppose we should be grateful they haven’t just showed up this morning. At least we’ve had some warning.”
“Two days,” Mercy mourned. “Doesn’t give anyone much time.”
“We haven’t been doing anything wrong, Mercy.” Nerren’s voice was sharp.
“No. We haven’t done anything wrong,” Mercy echoed, as if repeating it would make it true. And in a sense, it was true. It was just that they hadn’t been entirely… forthcoming.
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.