“I’ll speak to Rosia and the rest of the damsels. Maybe this time they’ll tell me what I can do to rectify the situation.” She hesitated, glancing at Claire. Her cheeks were flushed lavender. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention . . . and I’m sorry.” Brevity abruptly walked past her desk toward the stacks.
Damn. There was no end to Claire making a social muck of things. She started forward. “Brevity.”
Brevity stopped short and turned, anxiety ringing in every twitch of movement. Claire chewed on her lip and sought the right approach. “I know this falls entirely under your authority,” she said slowly, “but the Arcane Wing would consider it a great favor if we could assist with the Unwritten Wing’s investigation of this issue.”
Brevity’s shoulders sagged, if only a little. “Oh, right. Sure you can.” A sliver, a ghost really, of the old Brevity was there, easy and warm for just a moment before skittering from sight. “Would you, um, like to . . . ?” Wiggling fingers gestured toward the depths of the stacks where the damsel suite was located.
Claire kept her nod businesslike. “Please lead the way.”
It was a pantomime that kept them going. If Claire and Brevity had been intractable from librarian and apprentice, they had been forced to become someone else—something else—now. Arcane Wing and Unwritten. Duties instead of people. Claire, above all, knew how much easier it was to be a duty rather than a person. She also knew the damage it caused. She had worried at it but ultimately decided it was better than losing Brevity entirely. It was as much Claire’s unwillingness to let go of the Library as it was Brevity’s reluctance to step up, after all. They just needed time to settle. A quiet truce would eventually see them back to rights, or at least somewhere adjacent to it.
Claire followed Brevity down the canyons of wood and leather that made up the Unwritten Wing. Her mind continued to tick and twitch, impossible to not note all the hundreds of little things that had changed. The Unwritten Wing was supposed to be static, a place of preservation, but nothing overflowing with stories ever stayed the same. Claire could see the ways the wing had softened and shifted to suit Brevity, just as the Arcane Wing had for Claire. The biggest changes were immediately obvious; the blond woods and frosted-glass globes were gone, warmed to a ruddy cherry and curious silver starburst lights that had the impression of orbiting, ever so slightly, out of the corner of her eye. There were more subtle changes too. The ends of the stacks were capped with loud paintings that appeared to shift and vibrate with just as much life as the clutch of stacked books nested against the wood. It made Claire flinch to see books stacked on the floor—messy, loud, potentially damaging. Who knew what bad influence each story was having on others, fraternizing higgledy-piggledy like that? But Brevity never was as afraid of making a mess. Claire admired that, the courage to spill things, fix your mistakes, try again. Claire had never had the stomach for it. But then again, Claire’s first mistake in the Library had been impossible to take back. A bit of murder had a tendency to make one gun-shy.
The hodgepodge tower of books seemed content, pages fluttering so lightly as to not even disturb the dust on the covers as they walked by. And content, stable books were all the Library hoped to achieve, Claire was forced to remind herself.
The entrance to the damsel suite, at least, had remained the same. The door was inset with frosted glass, behind which the low murmur of discussion, broken with occasional laughter, percolated. Brevity knocked twice before pulling open the door, leaving Claire to follow behind her. In the past, when Claire had visited the damsels as head librarian, the room fell into a curbed silence at her presence. Not so under Brevity’s tenure, it seemed. Claire closed the door behind her on a clatter of buzzing conversation. Several of the women waved; one even whistled. The noise began to creep down by inches only when the damsels nearest the door caught sight of Claire. The energy fizzled out of the room.
“Need your attention for a minute!” Brevity said brightly, not seeming to notice the awkward lull. “I’ve brought Claire for a visit!”
The silence turned from a pause to a flatline. Claire kept her vague smile in place and thought that perhaps Brevity was a bit vindictive after all.
Brevity briefly scanned the cavernous room before frowning. “Where’s Rosia?”
A slender scholar at the nearest table shot her a confused look. “We thought she was still with you. No one’s seen her since last night.”
“She didn’t—but an hour ago . . .” Brevity sucked in a breath and turned, but Claire already had the door thrown open. Brevity sprinted back down the Library stacks, and Claire followed at a brisk pace.
At least, for once, they knew exactly where a runaway book was going.
2
BREVITY
The Arcane Wing is not merely a cabinet of curiosities, though many librarians have treated it as such over the years. It’s tempting to treat it simply as a storage room for the oddities of the Library, but that would discount the nature of physical objects in the afterlife. The items of the Arcane Wing do not end up there by chance. They were real objects, originating not in the afterlife, but on Earth. That would always carry a certain amount of weight. Pour enough of yourself into anything, and it will gain a gravity and gravitas.
Like attracts like. And here we are.
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE
RUNNING WITH CLAIRE OUT of the Library, past the gargoyle, and headlong into the next emergency was its own kind of comfort. It was familiar, like wiggling your toes into that threadbare pair of fuzzy slippers that you can’t bear to toss out. It might have been easy to pretend nothing had changed, if Probity hadn’t been there, a flowing blur of pastel and flutter in the corner of her sight.
There was no visible sign of Rosia as they burst through the Arcane Wing’s doors, though the wing’s sole remaining raven took flight with a riot of protests before landing on the tall shelves toward the back. The torn edges of Claire’s dull tiered skirts fluttered as she strode in that direction, purposefully ignoring the auxiliary shadows. She led them unerringly deep into the wing, precisely to where the raven was squawking.
“I hear you, Bird. I hear you, damn it . . .” Claire’s voice clipped off abruptly, and Brevity collided with her shoulder. There was no Rosia at the back of the Arcane Wing, nor was there any floor. For a moment, it looked to Brevity as if an obsidian ice had taken over the floor. From the end of the aisle to the L-shaped far wall of old rookery cages, the entire floor was lost in black. Then Rami, Hero, and Probity clattered up behind them, causing a faint ripple at the nearest edge.
The ripples were too deep to be a simple spill. The wood paneling just suddenly . . . ceased to exist half a meter from Claire’s feet.
The space had a rough two-meter radius, jagged at the edges with splintered wood. There were no struts, supports, or cobwebs to give the void beneath perspective. Brevity crept in for a closer look. She slipped past Claire to crouch at the edge of the fissure. It was a black, engulfing, depthless nothing that felt like it extended downward forever, until Brevity caught a flicker of movement. A glossy reflection of aquamarine hair and a pale face stared back at her, and her perception pivoted.