“So,” Gremory said. “The angel has not returned and it looks like someone’s trying to kill you. I suggest we return to the city.”
Shadow gave a slow nod. She was reluctant to let matters stand, but they seemed to have reached a dead end. “What about the possession?” she asked. Gremory gave her a long, contemplative look.
“I’ll see what else can be done. For the moment, make the most of it.”
From the sound of it, Gremory was in a terrible mood. There was an eyeblink flicker. The demon sat before her, riding in state on the back of the black camel.
“Hang on,” Shadow said. “Which one of those are you?”
The demon looked puzzled. “Both.”
The camel knelt, looking at her out of a knowing eye. “Which eyes do you see out of, then? Both sets?”
The camel nodded. Unnerved, Shadow climbed up behind the human half of the demon and the camel wheeled around, heading out of the rising sunlight.
They had been travelling for about an hour, with the sun strengthening at Shadow’s back, when the mirage first shimmered up on the western horizon. At first, Shadow thought it was the city itself and frowned, wondering how they’d covered so much ground so quickly. Then, as the image grew clearer, she realised it was an illusion, conjured out of heat and sand and air.
It appeared to be a fortress, rising sheer out of the desert floor. She could see the castellated turrets, the massive battlements. It looked like something the crusaders might have left. A flag, bearing a device like a spiked golden wheel, snapped above the fortifications and she saw the glint of metal-armour? weapons?-on the battlements themselves, catching the sunlight for a moment before flicking out of view. The walls were of sandstone, a warm ruddy gold.
The demon slowed. Her gait became sidling, circuitous, but then she moved on. As they drew closer to the mirage, Shadow began to understand the reason for her hesitation: this image, out of air, looked very solid. Then, as they grew nearer still, she saw that it was solid. Her new senses, borrowed from the spirit, caught sight of wisps and curls of mist moving with purpose along the terraces.
“What the hell?”
“We’re too visible,” Gremory said. “Get down.”
Shadow slid off. Next moment, the demon was standing beside her, this time in her human form alone. Gremory took hold of the cloak and cast it outwards. It billowed on the air, a pale, transparent red, covering them both.
“It’s like your veil,” the demon explained.
Shadow nodded. They walked down the slope towards the fortress. Up close, she could see the immense blocks of stone from which it had been fashioned. It was far larger than it should have been, and she could only presume that it was some relic from a story, inexplicably made manifest here in the middle of the desert. There were still no signs of life, only the faint traces of mist above them. But Shadow could not help but feel they were being watched.
Any question as to how they might get into the fort was rendered immaterial by the fact that the great doors at the base of the rock were wide open.
“Hmmm,” the demon said. Shadow laughed.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not the trusting sort.”
“This reminds me of something.”
“It’ll be a tale of some kind. I’ve been trying to think-it’s familiar, but I don’t know where it’s from.”
By now they were immediately under the archway. Soot-black curves of rock stretched above them and there was a sudden cool damp breath, out of the morning heat. Shadow saw a courtyard immediately ahead, sunlit, with a splashing fountain. The sound took her back to the Shah’s courtyard and she shivered in the coolness. The demon shot her a sharp red glance.
“What is it?”
“Memory. I don’t think we should go further.”
“I want to see,” Gremory said.
They walked on, cautious. Shadow hesitated, but it seemed that the demon’s mind was made up and Shadow did not want to risk heading back to the city without her. She could see diamonds of light about the fountain; they reminded her of the spirit, fracturing. It was not a welcome recollection. The demon’s veil cast a rosy light over everything, a distraction. But the courtyard was empty of everything except the fountain and a small striped cat, washing itself.
“Hello,” Shadow said.
“Don’t talk to it. You don’t know what it might be.”
A fair point coming from a shapeshifting camel, Shadow thought. The cat glanced up incuriously and rose, sauntering into the dark colonnade which surrounded the courtyard. This was the middle of the building. Above the low colonnade the walls rose straight up for several hundred feet. Looking up was like looking down a well, and gave Shadow a moment of vertigo. They followed the cat under the colonnade. Here, in the shadows, a series of doors and steps led upwards. At the top of the stairs, the demon suddenly hauled Shadow back so hard that she stumbled.
“Sorry,” Gremory said, perfunctorily. Ahead, a landing opened out into a high, airy room, with unglazed windows which should have been open to the sky. The entire room was filled with sticky red strands, undulating faintly as if in a draught. They glistened.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Don’t touch them.”
Shadow did not need to be told. They moved on, finding the same strange threads filling other rooms, and stretching out above their heads to the ceiling of the passages. There was no discernible smell that Shadow could detect, but the threads looked alarmingly like bloody sinews-fibrous tendons connecting bones to tissue more properly found inside a living creature, not inhabiting a fortress.
Thirty-Six
Deed was speaking to the Librarian’s blood. He crouched in front of an alembic, watching as the liquid it contained bubbled and congealed. He had already added the substances that would precipitate the nigredo to it-eking out the blood with a fluid condenser-and had carefully scraped the resulting residue from the bottom of the retort. He was now well into the second stage of the process. Around him, the boards of the chamber crackled with spells, keeping any wards contained within the Librarian’s blood well within bounds. He doubted that Mercy Fane herself knew they were there, or what the oaths that she had taken had produced. Deed smiled, imagining Mercy as young, ardent, keen, and completely ignorant of what she was actually letting herself in for. The Skein had, Deed was forced to admit, certainly done a pretty effective number on their personnel. If Mercy knew what her initiation had done, and how it had changed her, he wondered whether she would be so zealous in her defence of the Library. Perhaps she would. People, Deed was the first to admit, were weird.
He dropped the preparation of powdered blood into a nearby crucible and took a pipette. With this, a drop of the boiling blood was added, along with a preparation of fuller’s earth and copper. Deed, murmuring under his breath, added elements to the mixture until an unwholesome sludge formed in the bottom of the crucible. Not promising. Never mind, thought Deed. There were more ways than one if this didn’t work.
Deed recited a long sequence of spells with ease. Disir memory was long, and retentive, especially when combined with human powers of analysis. Then he placed the crucible back over the flame and waited for a moment. The crucible sparked and crackled with momentary electricity and something began to rise and flex in the base. Deed stood back, and watched with satisfaction.
Thirty-Seven
Mercy looked at the Court from the vantage point of the Library steps. On returning from the Northern Quarter, they had come straight back to the Library and the late afternoon sun was strong, falling clear as honey over the surfaces of the buildings and the marble of the square, imbuing it with a lucidity that made it almost transparent. It was a relief to be out of the northern part of the city, away from the snow. The Western Quarter felt almost tropical. The sun was going down over the Western Ocean: she could see it in a gap between the buildings, making the sea molten. It was not long till dusk.