Mercy read the story. It was not clear if Mareritt was heroine or villain: she saved the ship, but for her own reasons. This ambivalence did not seem to bother the author, concerned mainly with the protagonist of his story, the ghost of a young cabin boy. But at the end of the tale, Mareritt told the boy something usefuclass="underline" If you need me again, call my name three times in moonlight and I will come.
All right, thought Mercy. We’ll see if that works. Anyway, Mareritt would want to see her, wouldn’t she? Mercy had been successfuclass="underline" she had obtained The Winter Book. It was too early as yet: the sun had only just gone down. But she would be able to see the moon’s rise from the top of the building easily enough. The geas gave a twinge.
She put the book back in its place and locked up. Walking down the next row of stacks, she heard a sound.
Night watchman? Probably. But the sound did not come again, as if someone was keeping still. Mercy drew the sword. She tiptoed along the row of books, paused, waited. Nothing.
Then a floorboard creaked. Mercy turned and was struck blind. Something billowed over her head, shutting off sight and hearing. The sword was entangled and she could not strike.
Then it was whisked away.
“Sorry!” Shadow said. “I didn’t realise it was you.”
“We’re going to have to tell the Elders,” Mercy said, some minutes later. They were sitting back in her office. Shadow, unveiled, looked haunted. She wore a long-sleeved blue shirt, with an indigo tunic over it, and loose blue trousers. Her feet were booted. She looked weary: unsurprising, if what she had told Mercy was the truth.
“Mariam Shenudah is taking it to the imams and the magi of the University,” Shadow said. “She has contacts: they’ll listen to her.”
“It ought to go to the city council,” Mercy remarked. “Oh wait, we haven’t got one. The Citadel doesn’t count-all they do is pointless inspections which have to be written up in triplicate.”
Shadow sighed. “Maybe this is heresy of a kind, but I’m beginning to realise what a stranglehold the Skein have had on this city.”
“No, you’re right. We’re not geared up for anything. It’s been a year. Everyone’s put their heads in the sand and pretended that we can just bumble along as normal. We deserve to be attacked, frankly.” She paused. “A tale for a tale. This is what’s been happening here.”
When she had finished her story, Shadow stared at her. “The members of the Court have always wanted more power than they’ve been entitled to. But they’ll have to work with others now. If they don’t pitch in, the city could crumble. And I think we’ll need their magic to fight the Storm Lords.”
Mercy thought she was probably right, but she was not so sure that the Court would not want Worldsoul to fall. “We need to look at possibilities. The disir wouldn’t have been able to come through if the Skein were here. The flower attacks began after the Skein vanished. If the Skein were keeping a lid on rifts between the Liminality and parts of the nevergone, then we don’t have two problems: we’ve only got one, but it’s a big one.”
“Elemiel said there’s a spell which will seal the gap,” Shadow said. “But he doesn’t know where it is. We need to find it.”
“And if we do find it, it could shut out the Barquess, and probably the Skein as well.”
“Your mother is on that ship, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” Mercy did not trust herself to say more.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Shadow said. “But for the rest-for the Skein, I mean-I think it’s time we stood on our own two feet.”
The emergency session of the Elders could have been embarrassing, but the matter was serious enough to override Mercy’s professional transgressions. Shadow addressed the dismayed Elders, speaking with clarity and force, and backed by a deputation from the Eastern Quarter that included Mariam Shenudah.
“The University has texts about the Storm Lords. They’re ancient. They’re story-eaters-that’s the aim. Devour and destroy the tales of men, so the nevergone will belong to them. But we have a choice,” Shenudah said. “We can squabble and fragment, or we can stand together.”
“What proof do you have?” Elder Tope asked. “This is a fantastic tale and we are used to fantastic tales. But what proof is there?” Moonlight flooded in through the tall windows of the council chamber, vying with the illumination from the lamps. So much light, Mercy thought, and yet none of us can see clearly.
“I know this woman,” Shenudah said. “She would not lie.”
Shenudah spoke quietly, however, and Shadow said, “But they don’t know me. I have no proof, only my word, and why should they believe me?”
“It is not that we think you are lying,” Tope said. “But people can get things wrong. Stories can be deceptive.”
“And this is as you said, a fantastic tale.”
Mercy began to have the terrible suspicion that all this would be in vain. After the hearing, things would simply remain as before. But what could they do except be reasonable? She thought Shadow’s story was indeed extraordinary, but she had spent her lifetime among extraordinary stories.
“The flower attacks didn’t come from nowhere,” she said.
Tope sighed. “We can’t just accept this without some kind of evidence.”
“No, I understand that.”
“Maybe I can help,” an unfamiliar voice said.
In the hours that followed, desperate though they were, Mercy found a few moments in which to treasure the sight of the faces of a Library committee confronted with the sudden manifestation of a talking camel.
“Oh, sorry,” the demon said, without a trace of apology. “Wrong one.” It now took the appearance of a woman, armoured for war. The armour was crimson and made of supple leather; the demon’s hair was braided and she wore a band across her brow with the symbol of a crescent moon. Mercy heard Shadow sigh.
“I wondered where you’d got to.”
“I was annoyed. Elemiel put us both at considerable risk-typical of someone indestructible to underestimate danger. I ended up at the ends of the Earth-it’s taken me all this time to get back.”
“You are a demon,” Librarian McLaren said. He looked amused rather than alarmed.
“Yes. My name is Gremory. I am a duke of Hell.”
“How did you get past the wards?”
“I don’t think I’ll tell you that,” Gremory said. “For reasons that should be obvious.” She strode forward and put taloned hands on the council table. “But this woman is telling the truth. I realise that a demon’s word is subject to some doubt, sadly, and thus as a gesture of good faith, I propose to lend you this for safekeeping.”
She tugged at her hand and placed a ring on the table: a thick band of gold bearing a carnelian inscribed with a sigil. The Elders’ eyes bulged: the demon had handed over her own domination.
“Why?” Mercy heard Shadow breathe.
The Duke of Hell looked at her. “I’m not really the altruistic sort. It’s because of the Court. I am a Goetic entity; they work with us, as you know. I come from the book known as the Grimoire Verum. This you can easily verify. The Abbot General, Jonathan Deed, has broken a pact made between the Court and my masters. He has sought power from elsewhere and that power, when it comes, will undermine ours.”
“From the disir?” Mercy asked.
“His god Loki has a disir army amassing in the nevergone. Plans to bring them into Worldsoul, take over the city. Meanwhile we’ve got the Storm Lords planning much the same thing, except they want to strip everything back to basics: obliterate humanity’s tales, replace them with their own. As one of those stories,” the demon said, looking modestly at a talon, “I am naturally a little concerned.”
Mercy could feel relief emanating from Shadow. “I’m glad you have an agenda. The lack of it was worrying me.”