15
HERO
I know what I need from the hints Malphas dropped, the research I did: a realm, a god, a guide, a people. Common sense tells me that I, alone, cannot acquire a realm, let alone a god. My allies are few. I was not an easy woman to like in life, and I was not an easy woman to like in death. The ally I do have in Revka . . . no. No, I’m not willing to risk her. She’d help me, but Hell would make her pay for it.
I am surrounded elsewise by books and demons and all who want something from me. My hope lies in the other librarians.
Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE
“Shit. Merde. Fuck.” Hero’s enunciation was excellent. His faux-royal air wasn’t entirely put on just to annoy Claire after all. He’d had tutors in his time as a young tyrant-king. He’d ruthlessly beat out his common upbringing and now knew how to roll his tongue, gliding in a way that could draw out the sweet spots of words and phrases. He gloried in practicing the full extent of his skills as he ran through the filthiest vocabulary he could conjure.
He had learned some things from the damsels after all.
“Can’t you do something about him?” Iambe asked, fingers pressed to her temple.
“No, and I don’t try,” Rami said with an unperturbed air, though Hero didn’t miss how he flinched when Hero struck on something delightfully sacrilegious. Rami was particularly handsome from this angle. Sprawled with curated insolence across the desk, head hanging over the side, Hero had a particularly good view of Rami’s jawline. It nearly distracted him from his amusement. Nearly.
“Come now, Librarian Echo, don’t be rude. Cat got your tongue?” he said. And then, just as she was about to speak, with some terribly clever twist of “tongue,” no doubt, Hero added a particularly crude insult in some language a book had told him was Klingon. And Echo closed her mouth again.
Books had become so much more fun since he had started actually reading them. Gave you all kinds of strange ideas. Hero could see why Claire was so fond of it now.
“Sometimes I wish Alecto really had mauled you on your last visit,” Iambe said with a sniff. “Then again I doubt even a lion could have taught you when to back off.”
“—ck off,” Echo said primly.
“See?” Iambe looked smug. “Mother is much more practiced at this game than you.”
Hero’s hand flew to his chest. “Such language! I am shocked, Echo. Think of the children.” Hero gestured vaguely in the direction of the children’s books section of the collection. Though the Unwritten Wing had enough sense to secure any books at risk of expelling innocent characters far, far away from the front entrance.
“Must you be so rude?”
Hero shrugged. “It’s not as if sentient ponds can complain.”
“Don’t antagonize the immortal reflection, if you please.” Claire and Brevity entered at a brisk pace. Claire’s pallor become evident as they drew nearer. Her warm brown cheeks had a tendency to take on a waxy, unhealthy quality under duress. There was a peculiar brightness to her eyes, too wet and too sharp.
“Walter was helpful,” Hero guessed with a fair degree of certainty. In Hell, only success was that distressing. He rolled off the desk and onto the balls of his feet. He caught Brevity by the shoulder as she deposited her bag. “What happened?”
“We talked to Poppaea.” Brevity’s brow crinkled. She scrunched up her nose and rubbed a hand over her face. “Well, kinda. Kinda Malphas too—Hell is shit at this memory thing. We think—”
“Not here,” Claire cautioned. Her shoulders were tight, arms crossed in front of her chest like a shield. Rami offered her a cup of tea and she took and sipped it absently. “Too close to the entrance. Perhaps the office—”
“We’ll go to the damsel suite,” Brevity said.
Claire shook her head. “Until we are decided on a course of action—”
“If we’re deciding what to do, the damsels get a vote.” A gritty resolution streaked Brevity’s tone, and Hero cocked a brow at her. “This involves all of us. No more unilateral decisions.”
Porcelain clinked against wood as Claire set her cup down and considered. She nodded, if slowly. “As you say, Librarian.”
Out of habit, Hero scrutinized the tension in Claire’s voice. He was surprised by what he found. Claire was able to defer to Brevity by her former title, without the throb of still-healing loss. The wound of “Librarian” had healed between them, or at the very least scabbed over. Both Claire and Brevity had the good sense not to pick at it.
With the Arcane Wing gone, Hero wondered if Claire and Rami had a title at all. Perhaps they were all simply patrons—or refugees—seeking shelter in the Library. That was part of what libraries were for, after all. Then again, perhaps they were as lost as Hero was. That was a disturbing thought.
“Librarian Echo,” Brevity said after holding the silence a beat too long. She turned and cleared her throat. She straightened, a hand fluttering up to her face though she had no glasses to straighten. Hero by now recognized this as her “librarian” mode. “Will you and Iambe join us? I think this concerns all of us now.” She paused. “I mean, Pallas is welcome too, but . . .”
She trailed off and made an awkward gesture at the puddle depression in the rug where Pallas’s true form slumped at rest. Echo, in her not-Pallas image, shook her head.
“My brother can guard the doors,” Iambe answered dryly. “He doesn’t mind.”
“Mind,” Echo repeated with a reproachful tone. Mother and daughter had almost matching frowns when turned on each other. Brevity had the wisdom to simply nod and jerk her chin toward the widest aisle between the stacks. Claire and Rami followed, and Hero stretched before nudging past Echo.
“Come along then, Pond,” Hero muttered.
“Poppaea didn’t just rebel against Hell,” Claire announced once they were settled in the lounge. Brevity had commandeered the main sitting area, and the residents of the damsel suite were crowded to the walls. Their numbers had grown under her care. Claire sat in an armchair near the center, hands twisted in her lap. “She tried to establish a sovereign realm of her own. For the Library.”
“I . . .” Rami stopped, with a wrinkle of his brow so deep that Hero thought he’d hurt himself. “I didn’t think that was a thing a mortal could do.”
“It’s not,” Iambe said, a bit scandalized.
“But Poppaea tried anyway. I have a feeling she nearly got away with it.”
“A way with it . . . ?” Echo said.
Claire evidently had better practice decoding oblique questions than Hero did. She shook her head. “You would need a lot of things. Poppaea knew what those things were. A place to go, for one. And a realm is not an easy thing to secure.”
“Not a lot of vacancy signs advertised in the local paper.”
“But that wasn’t the most important thing she lacked.” Brevity counted on her fingers. “A realm, a god, some kind of guide, and—”
“Did you say a god?” Rami nearly dropped the delicate teacup that Rosia had offered him.
“There was one more thing.” Claire ignored him and instead turned a steady gaze to Echo. “Poppaea was attempting to establish a realm for the Library—all the wings of the Library. For that, she would need the consensus and agreement of all the librarians of all the wings in the afterlife.”
“The Library is already a single entity, though.” Rami frowned. “The interworld loan signifies that.”
“You haven’t spent much time around libraries, have you, angel?” Iambe narrowed her eyes with amusement.
“By all means, enlighten us, then,” Hero said.
“Libraries may be united in theory, but the job doesn’t exactly attract the most conforming types, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Iambe made a dismissive flick in the direction of her mother.
“We can be quite territorial and set in our ways,” Claire said.
Hero conjured an appropriately theatrical gasp of shock.
“The IWL is more of an agreement,” Brevity admitted. “We don’t really, uh, talk.”
“There hasn’t been a universal concord among the wings of the Library since . . .” Claire stopped, frowning as she thought. “Since Poppaea’s time, I suppose.”
“And even she failed,” Hero muttered. “So each wing is its own little fiefdom, in your practice? No wonder.”
“Libraries are unique to the needs of their patrons,” Claire insisted. Hero was kind enough to not mention that the Unwritten Wing didn’t particularly have patrons, only benign demons at best. “The only thing we share in common is the artifacts in our care.”
“The souls,” Rami corrected gently.
Claire’s brow twitched. “Yes. I mean the souls in our care.”
Rami nodded. “So we gather them.”
“Them,” Hero muttered to himself, ruefully. “Yes, a reunion.”
“We shouldn’t just barge in . . . like last time.” Brevity bit her lip. “It didn’t go so well.”
“I’ll help you with whatever diplomatic niceties we need.” Claire’s voice curdled a little at the idea, but her gaze narrowed in Hero and Rami’s direction. “But there’s something else we can do in the meantime.”
Hero leaned in toward Rami and pitched his voice at a false whisper that would carry. “Why is it, when a librarian says ‘we,’ I hear ‘you lot,’ and when she says ‘something else,’ I hear ‘ludicrous peril’?”