She had no intention of telling anyone what she was planning, only Perra, who had seen Mareritt and heard what Salt had to say, but the ka kept its own counsel. She could feel the geas at the back of her head: a magical engine, driving her on. Infuriating, but she’d tried everything she could think of to dislodge it and nothing had worked. Followed by the silent Perra, she took the staircase up to the summit of the building and a view of the Court: the black façade, shadowy in the sunlight, and the perpetual glitter of the golden vanes that rode the air above it, testing the direction of the magics that coiled around its eaves.
When she once more stepped out onto the roof of the Library, Mercy had woven a trail of thought, untraceable behind the solid walls of the Library itself, a trail of memory that would enable anyone who knew what they were doing to follow her. If necessary.
She hoped that wouldn’t have to happen. What she was doing was risky, but it was the only way in, and daylight-just on the turn-was the safest time. Now, she hoped, with the onset of twilight, the Court would be preoccupied with closing its main entrance and reaffirming its wards, rather than with what might be happening on its roof.
Mercy perched on the roof of the Library, steadying herself on the arm of a stone spirit. The spirit gazed sightlessly out across the city; a sculpture that had been old when the world was young. It had come with the Library from Egypt, a human figure with a bird’s head. The beak had long since worn away, impossible to tell now whether it had been hawk or ibis or owl. Mercy had studied it before, and sometimes when it rained, she thought she detected the gleam of life in its sightless eyes, like a flicker of movement at the bottom of a pool.
It was not raining now. The sun was a line of flame above the horizon and as she watched it slipped below the world into night. Behind her, above the Eastern Quarter, the sky was already deepening to aquamarine. On the stone spirit’s shoulder crouched the ka.
Mercy took her notes from her pocket. She had jotted down a number of things relating to the Court: old tales, ancient stories. No poems, though, although she had found several; they were too unstable for the purpose she had in mind. Glancing down at her notes, she began to speak.
“… and there was a guild of Magicians, who summoned demons from the storms of the air…
Once upon a time, there was a boy…
The nature of the Lemegeton is this, that it is the word of Solomon the King…
She did not know who the old man might be, but…
… and the conjuror took his handkerchief out of his pocket and from it, he brought a dove… ”
As she spoke, she looked out across the air. A fragile bridge of words was beginning to link the summit of the Library with the golden-vaned rooftop of the Court. Mercy spoke on, weaving words into the air, drawing in the last of the light to power her tale, rendering it into a storyway: a story of a boy and a magician and a dove. No demons, though: she didn’t want to take the risk. The ka stirred, restless, on the stone spirit’s shoulder. When she was sure that the story had taken form, Mercy stepped out onto the storyway, praying to the stone spirit behind her that it would bear her weight.
The storyway held. Mercy stepped out onto words, snatches of phrase, trailing sentences. She walked a careful tightrope, not looking down, although the sparkling sunlit cradle beneath her, woven out of the lastlight, would conceal her from view from below.
And from the Court? Well, hopefully.
She did not look back, and did not know whether Perra was following. But when she stepped onto the battlement of the House of the Court, still shrouded in story, she looked down to see the ka at her feet.
Behind her, the story faded into the dusk. Mercy tensed but there were no sirens, shrieks, betraying cries, even though both her feet were now balancing on the parapet. She glanced back to see the stone spirit directly opposite, several hundred yards away. She thought she must have imagined the look of disapproval on its weathered face.
Not wanting to speak aloud, she motioned to the ka. The parapet led onto a sloping roof, mazed with spell-vanes. Golden griffins, dragons, cockerels spun in the twilight breeze. Mercy tasted magic on her tongue; the flavours of fire and nutmeg, of charcoal and iron and wood smoke. She tasted metal, the alchemical drift of currents slipping up between cracks in the floorboards below, between the tiles. She smelled roses and ash, myrrh and pine resin, and weaving between the spell-vanes she saw a drift of colours against the twilight air: azure and gold, jade and swallow’s-wing indigo.
The trick was to avoid these tides of magic. She did not want to run the risk of sending something back, disturbing a trace and advertising her presence on the roof. She stepped cautiously, taking care that her sleeve should not brush the spines of the spell-vanes. Mercy knew they could not see her, although their golden eyes seemed to follow her, knowingly. She breathed spells of invisibility, drawing disguise from the air, but she knew that these would not last for long. The ka padded ahead, wings carefully furled.
At the far side of the roof stood a turret. It had no door, being open to the four winds. Symbols of coloured glass hung in each quarter: blue, green, yellow, red, turning lazily in the wind and catching the light from a lamp that hung beneath the eaves of the turret. Cautiously, Mercy ducked under the arch. The turret was wider than it appeared and a set of stone steps led downwards in a spiral. Mercy looked at Perra, mouthed, Ready?
Side by side, they began to descend the stairs.
Halfway down, Mercy and Perra heard footsteps, coming up. There was nowhere to hide. Mercy cursed, and brought the sword up. The footsteps turned away, into a lower room. Mercy exhaled. Quickly, they padded down the stairs and onto a narrow landing.
The Court was a maze, labyrinthine passages and very little sense of symmetry. It was impossible to tell where they were in the building: they went up steps, down steps, through doorways and around sudden sharp corners. Once Mercy heard voices and retreated, retracing her steps, but the rooms here looked completely different and she began to despair of ever finding her way out again, let alone of locating a lock that Mareritt’s key fit. She whispered her concerns to Perra.
“Ask it,” the ka advised.
Feeling foolish, Mercy did so.
“Straight on,” sang out a small, metallic voice, obligingly. Raising an eyebrow, Mercy followed its instructions, which began to come more and more quickly. The key led them down further flights of stairs, through empty chambers, skirting the sound of voices, footsteps, the sudden whir of machinery. Mercy was used to the convoluted corridors of the Library, but the Library possessed a harmony, a unifying conception of architecture that made it feel as though you ought to know where you were, even if you didn’t. The Court, in comparison, was cramped or overtly spacious, too dark or lit by searing lamplight. Its proportions were wrong and nothing seemed even. Mercy wondered whether this was to confuse visitors, or its occupants. The atmosphere was filled with competing magics: sigils which hissed and spat at one another like warring cats from opposing doorways, bristling wards which raked the skin with icy needles or which scored with scorches of flame. The House of the Court seemed made of dark oak, worn stone, ancient glass, and to Mercy’s trained Librarian’s eye it breathed out stories. She could detect the scraps and tatters of legend embedded in the framework of the building, imprisoned and jammed together in an enforced attempt at control.