“Left!” sang the key, and Mercy obeyed.
Deed stood back, pleased with his endeavours. The thing was taking shape, curdling and writhing in the crucible. As he watched, the eyes opened in the rudimentary head, a dull toad-gold.
Deed squatted down on his heels to bring himself level with the crucible.
“Can you hear me?”
A pause. Then the thing gave a slow nod.
“And clearly you can understand,” Deed said. “Good. I want you to listen carefully. There’s something I want you to do… ”
“Where now?” Mercy asked the key. They were standing in front of an old oak door, black with age or fire. The door, which was closed, lay at the end of a passage, which smelled of damp stone.
“This is my door,” the key sang.
“Oh!” Mercy said. She looked down at the ka. “Did you hear that?” Exhilarated by the discovery, but knowing it would be a mistake to be too gung-ho, she asked the key, “What’s behind the door?”
“The library.”
Good.
“Is there anyone likely to be in there?” she asked the key. Presumably not, if the door was locked, but you never knew. They could have locked it from the inside and it was doubtful that this was the only key.
“I do not know.”
The geas twitched inside her mind. Bending, Mercy slipped the key into the lock. It fitted and the lock turned. Mercy stepped through into the library of the Court.
Deed leaped back as the glass of the crucible shattered. Like birth, he supposed, with an element of the violent and bloody about it. The homunculus, toad-eyes blinking, spat a sliver of glass from its mouth and sprang to the floor.
“Go, then,” Deed hissed. He brought down the black-handled knife and the wards around the apparatus fell noiselessly away. The homunculus raced towards the open window and shot out into the night.
“Homing instinct,” Deed murmured. He reached out an arm and swept the glass shards to the floor.
If she’d stepped into the room with her eyes closed, Mercy would have recognised it as a library. It had something to do with the weight of the air, with the quality of soundlessness inside the room. But she had no intention of closing her eyes and the purpose of the room was evident from the rows of stacked books. Most were leather-spined and cracked with age, their gilt peeling, although she noticed a row of scrolls, piled edge on.
Mercy took a deep breath. This wasn’t just a private library. These were the books The Great Library of Worldsoul had failed to procure, the books which fell through cracks in realities, the books which were the most dangerous of all. This room contained grimoires: she could tell that by their iron-blood-charcoal smell and the wincing sensation of her skin, as though spiders walked across her flesh. These were the books of magic and sacrifice, of punishment and control. Some of these books, like the text from which the disir had sprung, would be bound with human skin flayed from a living victim. Mercy had met several books of which she was actively afraid, and a number which merely made her nervous. She did not, yet, know which category the books in this library would fall into.
Mareritt had said: You’ll know when you see it. Not very helpful, thought Mercy, but she was here now and she had to try, so she stepped further into the library and began to work her way as quickly and methodically as possible along the stacks. Even the shelves here were enchanted, made of bog oak and bound with silver and iron bands on which rows of runes had been inscribed. She recognised these as aggressive wards, a level of protection which the Library for which she worked rarely deployed: she could think of only a couple of cases. Something, or someone, had died to make sure that the contents of these books remained contained within those shelves. When she had come through the door, all manner of complex magics had reworked themselves around her, responding to the crucial presence of the key; if she had not been wielding that, she doubted whether she would now be still alive.
She concentrated at first on the scrolls, but they felt dead, or very inactive. That was probably a good thing, and she moved on to study the spines of a dark-bound set of books standing on a neighbouring shelf. All grimoires, but at the far end of the shelf beyond, the geas gave a violent start, like a startled horse, and in front of her she found a book with a bind-rune stamped on its skin cover and a title: The Winter Book. Bulls-eye! She took the book cautiously down from the shelf and opened it.
The book was written in what looked like Danish. From the scrolled gilt on its leather cover, she thought it was probably Victorian.
Perra said, “Someone is coming.”
“Shit!” Mercy had, with the assistance of the key, locked the door behind her, but Perra was right, she could hear shuffling sounds outside. She tucked The Winter Book under her jacket, darted to the end of the library and took refuge behind a stack. The library was relatively dimly lit, though Mercy could not see why, and hopefully large enough to avoid the person.
The door opened. Footsteps came along one of the rows, then stopped. Mercy held her breath. She didn’t think it was the same row from which she had taken the book and she hoped The Winter Book would keep its pages shut: books had been known to shout out before now. It must be nice, she thought bitterly, to live in a place like Earth, where inanimate objects didn’t have their own opinions. A jumbled montage of stories-millstones and necklaces and spinning wheels that shouted, “Help! Help!” when stolen-rapidly crossed Mercy’s mind’s eye. It was all Earth’s fault, anyway, for being a place where folk had imaginations. She clutched the book a little more tightly, but it did not speak.
The person was coming along the stacks. Mercy didn’t have any great impression of stealth, but if the person suspected she was there, why didn’t they simply accost her? Although it wasn’t like the Court to do things in an obvious manner.
The footsteps-a quick clicking tapping sound-abruptly stopped. Mercy looked down and saw that Perra was as still as a hunting cat. Only the tip of the ka’s leonine tail was twitching. She could hear a second, smaller ticking sound, but she did not know what that was. She was reminded of beetles, of bombs. She took a breath and peered, very cautiously, around the edge of the stack.
A woman stood further down the row, tapping a fountain pen against her teeth. It was this that had produced the clicking sound. The woman was young, with ice-blond hair bound up in a chignon. Her face was wide at the forehead, tapering to a pointed chin. As if she was aware of Mercy watching, she turned for a moment and looked down the row. Mercy caught her breath but the woman’s expression was absent, as if thinking. Her eyes, wide set, were a cold blue. She wore a black suit: a hobble skirt and a ruffled black jacket with a high collar. A cameo brooch clasped it at the neck; Mercy wondered what the cameo showed.
And high heels. With a sudden jolt, Mercy saw that the woman was not wearing shoes. Her bare ankles, visible beneath the long skirt, were pale skinned and extended to long spurs of spined bone. Her toes were talons. Appalled, Mercy looked at the girl’s hands; they, too, had long iron-coloured nails.
She heard the library door open and close. Someone said, “Darya?”
A male voice that slid across the skin. Mercy remembered the voice, a soothing doctor’s tone that reassured and held promises. Promises that were then violated.
“Abbot General?” Darya sounded nervous. Mercy was not entirely surprised.