10
BREVITY
Revka says I’m selfish, selfish in this quest to free the Unwritten Wing from its shackles. She’s right, but it’s so much worse than she knows. I’m not selfishly willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of my goals. It’s much worse than that. I’m selfish enough to want it all, and to lose nothing.
If there’s a shred of humanity left in me, after so many years down here, it’s that. I almost had it; I almost had it. Then Malphas threatened Revka, and I never even got so far as to speak to Lucifer.
It’s true: I’m selfish.
Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE
“Claire.” Rami’s voice sounded rougher than normal, as if the anchor stone of his calm was beginning to fracture. Hero gripped him a little tighter as he struggled to sit up. “Ma’am. Please reassure me that we did not nearly burn ourselves to oblivion in order to save a traitor’s soul from the flames.”
Claire gripped the dagger in her hand tighter, and Brevity knew when she finally released it there would be a burn imprinted in her palm. Really, Hero was the only one around here who was supposed to scar himself up. She got an elbow underneath herself and raised her chin in precisely the manner that told Brevity exactly how guilty she felt. Behind her the assembled damsels shifted uneasily. Some began filing out of the room, like smarter creatures smelling a storm on the horizon. “It was my duty as Arcanist to rescue whatever artifacts I could.”
“Artifacts, not prisoners.” Rami recovered his strength quickly. He stood, gently shaking off Hero’s offered arm. The feathers under the epaulets of his trench coat were singed, some burnt back terribly. He began brushing himself off—which only managed to smear the soot around. He didn’t seem to notice behind the thunderhead of judgment building in his eyes. “I saw you in there. You went right for that drawer. You risked everything to save that dagger.”
Claire couldn’t match Rami for pure supernatural stamina and recovery, so she settled her filthy skirts around her as if she were at a picnic rather than on the ash-covered floor of what had been the entrance to the Arcane Wing. “Your opinion is duly noted, apprentice.”
“My opinion,” Rami seethed, “is we should have left that thing to burn in Hell where it belongs and saved something more worthy. Are you aware we just lost the entire wing?”
Claire’s shoulders twitched once. She studied the dagger and her folded hands in her lap. “I am aware.”
The air in the room had simultaneously dropped several degrees and still managed to boil. Hero had a frozen look on his face—no help there. Brevity coughed and jumped forward, opening her mouth and praying something good fell out. “That’s not anyone’s fault, right? Why are we yelling at each other instead of Malphas?”
“Because some of us are too new here to have learned that this is Hell,” Claire said calmly. “Justice is not in the cards. We don’t get to choose who gets saved.”
“Don’t. . . . Don’t lecture me on Hell, Claire. I’ve known more demons than you ever will.” Rami bit his lip, appearing to try to get his temper under control. Brevity would have been fascinated if she hadn’t been so drained by terror; Rami was always the calm one, never angry, not since he’d joined them. He breathed once through his nose, then picked up and stowed his sword. “I will see all of them burn for this.” He flicked a look down to Claire’s lap and up again. “All of them.” Rami strode back up the stairs the way they’d come.
Brevity half expected Hero to follow him. Instead, he crossed over to drop to one knee next to Claire. “Hands,” he demanded flatly.
Claire startled and started to turn away with a sniff. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“Hands, Claire.” Hero stopped her by her shoulders but declined to do more than that. “You can drive off Rami with your monstrous side, but not me.”
“Because, as they say, it takes one to know one?”
Hero’s mouth curved up at the side. “Just as you say. So from one monster to another, show me your hands, warden.”
Claire relented with the grace of a sullen toddler. When she turned over her hands—one still gripping the dagger—Brevity let out a gasp. “Claire!”
“It’s not as bad as all that,” Claire tutted. “Don’t make such a fu—” She let out a hiss as Hero gently peeled her fingers from the handle. “Peeled,” here, being the correct term, as some skin appeared to remain behind, seared in painful bits and drabs to the heated metal. Claire’s palms were red from the fire, but her right hand, which had held the dagger, was positively raw.
“I have never understood how, for a dead woman, you injure yourself so easily in the afterlife.” His hands were gentler than his words, turning her palms and taking care not to touch the exposed burns.
“We can’t all be fast-healing characters from books.” It must have still hurt, because a sensible Claire would have noticed the way Hero winced at that. Claire’s face was a paler shade of brown than normal. “And it’s Hell: they can’t let me off easy. I’ll be fine in a few hours. It may not be a real physical body, but it’s amazing what inconvenient physics your mind can convince you of.”
“I’ll go find some bandages,” Brevity volunteered. She paused at the base of the stairs. “Hero, you’ll . . . ?”
“Any demons that come back to check on their handiwork will be a welcome excuse to work out my frustrations.” Hero sighed and stood to readjust the sword at his hip. “We’ll wait right here. Ma’am.”
That last part was Hero’s way of trying to soften his words. He did that more often lately. Had more soft bits, as if his time with Rami and Claire were wearing down the more barbed parts of his defenses. Brevity nodded and took the stairs two at a time.
She wasn’t entirely keen on the idea of running into Rami while he was still in a black mood, but the Unwritten Wing was the only reliable place for something as mundane as a first aid kit. She didn’t see him when she bustled past the front desk and found the neatly folded linens and thread Claire had kept in the bottom drawer for the more mortal kinds of repairs. She turned, arms full, and nearly tripped.
“Oh! Rosia, what are you doing?”
“Reading.” The small young damsel had no book in her hands.
“On the floor? Under my desk?” Brevity crouched down to pick up a linen she’d dropped. Rosia lay under the librarian’s desk, knees neatly pulled up. It wasn’t the oddest place that Brevity had found the girl, not since she had sunk into the unwritten ink and emerged again without her book. Brevity would have said it was impossible for a character to survive without their book if Hero hadn’t just pulled the same miracle. Now both of them, Rosia and Hero, had a somewhat honored and entirely unique status in the Unwritten Wing. No longer books, but still a part of it. Hero wanted nothing to do with the damsel suite, so Rosia had inexplicably become their eccentric leader.
“I can read anywhere now,” Rosia explained simply.
Brevity squinted but could see no writing anywhere on the underside of the desk. She suspected further inquiry along that line would not be helpful anyway. She straightened back up. “Well, there’s been . . . an accident, at the Arcane Wing. I’m going to take these to Claire. I’ll be right—”
“We should take the shadow way,” Rosia interrupted.
“Oh, you’re coming? I mean, you’re welcome to come, I guess.” Brevity tried not to grimace. She could shadowstep around the Library—little in-between blinks that real muses could do for long distances. She’d been restricted to the Library, though it had still come in handy when she’d been evading Andras’s monsters during the standoff. Somehow, she’d been loath to use it much since then. There was no reason for Rosia to take such an interest.
“This way.” Rosia rolled to her feet and took Brevity’s hand—which required some swift juggling on Brevity’s part. “Don’t worry,” Rosia added over her shoulder as she led them out. “I like this next part.”
She hadn’t intended to eavesdrop. Not really. It was just that the gargoyle had been taking up space with its moping in the hallway, so Brevity had gotten impatient and—just as Rosia had suggested—used her shadowstep to get around him. Hell being Hell, it dumped her out in a side passage. It had taken her a moment to get her bearings, but it was easy enough to orient herself. She could return to Claire and Hero taking the roundabout, and she was nearly there when a raised voice made her pause.
“When do you plan to tell them, then?” Hero’s voice practically cooed with accusation. Brevity slowed, creeping up to the end of the hallway with an instinctive quiet. She frowned, only half hiding—honest—as she peered around the corner.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Claire still sat on the floor, cradling both her hand and the soul dagger in the folds of her skirt.
“Oh, pish. Come on, warden.” Hero lolled against the banister of the stairs, cleverly positioned where he had a strategic view of the room—all except the nook of the service hallway Brevity stood in. “No one here but us monsters now. You can stop pretending you saved that little demon trap by chance.”
Claire’s chin took a mulish jut. “I don’t—”
“Why, Claire?” Hero interrupted softly.
The air deflated out of her. She said something too soft to hear, then appeared to repeat it. “We need him.”
That caught Hero off guard. He nearly straightened from his lazy pose—to make a character break character was a feat. He eased back down again, eyes narrowed. “You mean Andras.”
Claire nodded grimly. “Malphas went after the Arcane Wing first. And we’re still breathing. Therefore, I’m assuming she’s not at the Unwritten Wing’s gates now. That means she’s settling in for a long campaign, to control the books rather than destroy them. She took our arsenal, the closest thing the Unwritten Wing has to weaponry”—she made a placating gesture—“aside from you and Ramiel, of course.”
“Charmed,” Hero muttered.
“She’s making her move for the Unwritten Wing. She’s been patient and careful, but we’ve given her too good an opportunity, with you and the cover-up over the ink. I don’t know if she knows books are soul stuff yet, but if not, she will soon. Then wards and brute force won’t be enough to hold her back. We’ll need to play like demons.”
“We’ll need to play like Andras,” Hero supplied with a bitter tone. “You thought of all this in the mad dash from one wing to another?”
“I’ve thought of all this since the moment the wing shoved ten tons of demon antagonist into a six-inch blade.”
“Oh really, I’d say five at most.” Hero didn’t appear to be in the mood to be generous.
“I don’t know how we’ll do it yet, and I certainly am not doing anything until I know we have a damned good way to leash him,” Claire continued. “But we lost a great many weapons of power just now.” She paused, taking a slow, staggered breath, the loss still smoking behind her. She pressed her lips into a thin line before continuing. “And of all the artifacts in the Arcane Wing, this little bauble may have been what Malphas had hoped to melt down to slag the most.” Claire made a gesture and a distasteful face at the dagger cooling on the floor. “She’s scared of it. That means we can use it.”
“Or he can use us.”
“As I said, I’ll figure out a way to leash him.”
“Oh, trust me, warden, I know how good you are at binding bad men to your cause.”
Claire’s face lost some of its doom. Her grim frown gave way to the slightest smile. “You’re not a bad man, Hero.”
“You’re right—I am a terror.” Hero crouched down next to the silver blade. It had cooled enough to be picked up, which Hero did as if it were a particularly stinky fish. “I’m your monster too. We can handle one pissant demon.”
“And the army waiting in the wings?” Claire asked with amusement.
“Those I trust to you. You’ve handled worse before,” Hero said with complete confidence. He dropped the dagger again and sniffed. “But say the word, and I’ll serve you Andras’s throat on a platter. I haven’t forgiven him for the delightful makeover he gave me.” He tilted his scarred cheek to the light with a frown.
Claire chuckled. “Vain as always.”
“Clever as always,” Hero returned.
It seemed as good as any point. Brevity exchanged a look with Rosia and stamped her feet in place loudly, mimicking a clatter of a run before emerging from her hiding place. Rosia followed. Brev hoisted the box of bandages in the air like a trophy. “Found them!”
“It took some time,” Claire commented, worry knitting her brows together. “The Unwritten Wing?”
“Quiet,” Brevity assured her quickly. “The doors fixed themselves, and no sign of demons. The gargoyle’s on high alert and I did lock the way, just in case.”
“Whatever do you keep me around for?” Hero said with a wink. He approached and, taking the box from Brevity, leaned close enough to whisper, “Couldn’t have given me another minute, Librarian?”
Perhaps Brevity hadn’t been as stealthy as she’d thought. However, Hero didn’t seem bothered. He followed her over to Claire and efficiently selected the necessary materials to bandage Claire’s raw palm. Of course, a character from a war-torn book would be well versed in basic first aid. And Claire’d been right. The burns were already healing, at a slower pace than either Brevity or Hero recovered, but Claire would be fine enough after a rest and, likely, a cup of tea.
“We shouldn’t linger here,” Hero announced once he was done.
“Quite right,” Claire said. She stood and dusted off her skirts out of habit, though she was so soot caked it hardly had an effect. She grimaced at herself. “We should regroup and let our guests know what trouble they’ve caused already.” She frowned. “Assuming Rami hasn’t rethought his alliances and . . .”
“He’s waiting for you both,” Rosia said with confidence. Of course he was. As if any disagreement could dislodge him from his loyalties. It was obvious to Brevity how tightly enmeshed the Watcher had become with the Library. But she saw the relief flicker between Hero’s and Claire’s expressions like a firefly. For a moment Brevity thought she could almost see the thin shimmer of the magic that wound around all of them, binding them together like matching books. Humans sometimes called it many things: love, duty, family.
Brevity called it hope.