24

BREVITY

swirly backward s

Humans love to make things complicated. Look at belief. They build whole morality and judgment systems on it—who believes what, believes in the right way, believes strongly enough. It’s so unnecessary. Belief, when you get right down to it, is just a powerful story. Tell a story well, and the reader doesn’t just want it to be true—they know it is. Get enough souls to believe in a story, and you can change the world.

Or make one.

Librarian Fleur Michel, 1763 CE

Brevity fell through solid stone.

She didn’t break through. There was no crunch and snap of rock around her as she fell, simply a curious lack of wind. The stone didn’t give way beneath her so much as it became less real. She fell through a phantasm of solid rock. Strata of countless eons blurred in front of her eyes, so dizzying that Brevity could only distantly wonder what Hell’s geologic record could even be based on. Couldn’t wonder about that, not now, because she had to focus on the terror of the fall.

Easy to do, as it wasn’t ending anytime soon. Brevity’s arms swam through the not-stone, trying to find some purchase to slow her descent, but there was nothing there. She was falling through the nothing underside of a realm. At least the oubliette had been a place. She had made a horrible mistake.

If anything, that thought increased her fall speed. It took a surprising moment to realize when the stone faded away entirely. A shot of wind, so cold it seared her skin, startled her to her senses. She fell through a cavernous space, but it felt solidly real. Brevity was suddenly not in the liminal underside of Hell but somewhere. Somewhere hidden deep in the foundations. And, to her shock, she wasn’t alone.

Tiny black flecks roiled and frothed over the walls of the cavern in an infestation. It took another two minutes of falling to recognize those flecks were not insects but demons. Ranks of figures seethed along the walls of the cavern. Brevity had always known, technically, that Hell had armies. Malphas was a general after all. But to see it was something different. All of Hell’s legions littered the staging ground of the giant space. Along one edge, coils of what Brevity first had mistaken for borders resolved into scales as things came into view. Wyrms, like the snakelike monster that Andras had rampaged into the Library with, writhed in frenzied nests. Dozens—hundreds?—of them.

Brevity let out a gasp. She was still falling, rushing through the air so impossibly high above the cavern floor that none of the demons should have heard her. But there was a single figure at a dais in the center of the space that jerked her head up.

Malphas.

“What are you doing out of your cage, little mouse?”

The voice was sinuous and purring inside Brevity’s head. Below, Malphas barked an order and a trio of winged lieutenants shoved off the ground. Brevity’s heart leapt into her throat, but she was still falling toward the dark cavern floor below.

 . . . Dark cavern floor.

There was no time to think it through. The space was huge, but that made the shadows cast by the lights below long and deep. They jumped up to meet her as Brevity reached out and threw herself into a step through the shadows.


Brevity skidded through the shadows and into the light. She had just enough time to register a whirl of wood shelves and bright colors before she collided with something large and meaty. Said large, meaty thing said, “Ooof.”

At some point during the panic, Brevity had screwed her eyes shut, and now it took a concerted effort to open them. The world resolved into the whirling red eyes and hideous face of Death itself, and she’d never been so relieved to see it. “Walter? It’s . . .”

She wanted to ask if it was really him, if the jumbled clutter around them—it appeared Walter had caught her a second before she would have careened into a shelf of glass jars—was really the transport office. If she was really safe. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“Miss Brev! What’re you doin’ blinking all willy-nill— Oh hey, shh there.” Walter juggled her around in his arms until he could set her on the edge of a stool that was near the office counter. As the counter was made for Walter, Brevity’s head barely came level with the wood top. “There, now. Easy does it. Yer shaking like a wee pup.”

Was she? Brevity looked down with blank confusion at the tremors shivering through her hands. She was still staring at them when a giant-sized jacket dropped around her shoulders and Walter pressed a sloshing mug half-filled with hot liquid in her hands. “You look a fright, Miss Brevity, if you don’t mind me saying.”

The liquid in the mug wasn’t dark enough to be tea. Brevity took a numb sip. Walter looked embarrassed. “I don’t got anything proper like Miss Claire’s tea, so I just heated some water quick. I heard hot things are comforting to mortals. Not that you’re a mortal! I don’t mean to—oh!”

To her own surprise, Brevity fell forward, mug and all, and began to sob. Walter caught her against his chest and patted her back awkwardly with a hand the size of a dinner plate. “I’m sorry, I always go an’ say the wrong thing—”

“Walter, you . . .” Brevity sniffed against the rough fabric of his cobbled-together suit jacket. The mug was trapped between them and sloshed a wet spot on Walter’s delightfully ugly tie. “You are the only right thing that happened today.”

“There, there . . .” Walter eased her back to scrutinize her. Walter’s face was not made for concern, and his bulbous features took on a constipated look. “What got you in such a state?”

The question welled tears in Brevity’s eyes again. But before she could speak, an army of footsteps thundered down the steps to the transport office. Walter flailed as much as Brevity did, and somehow she ended up clutched to his chest like a shield as the gentle giant peered over her shoulder.

The first thing that emerged from the gloom of the stairwell was the glint of a blade. It was joined by a gun barrel, and then a thornbush of other weapons. The figures that crowded into the transport office’s cramped space were bristling with weapons and fury. Walter was being invaded, and the force was incredibly hostile.

“You will take us to Hell’s court, or else.”

Brevity had been busy preparing to reach for a shadow again, but she stopped at the familiar ghostly lilt of that voice. “Rosia?”

“Librarian?” Rosia’s impish face rose over the sights of a positively monstrous blunderbuss gun. The other damsels were equally armed. Brevity hadn’t even been aware that the damsel suite contained such an arsenal, but here they were, fitted for war. And there, at the back, lighting the curls of the tops of the damsels’ heads with holy fire, was a very familiar sword.

“Rami!” Brevity was too exhausted to be embarrassed that her face grew hot with tears again; to be embarrassed that Walter held her or that she half jumped, half crawled her way out of his arms and across the counter and landed on the other side with a thud, all while making quite pathetic sobbing sounds. She had been scared and had to pretend to be brave for so long and she had been so, so scared. She didn’t care how she looked; she had made it home.

Rami, to his credit, immediately had his sword sheathed and stepped forward. He barely managed to catch Brevity as she plowed between the damsels and caught her in a hug. This one wasn’t awkward, not like hugging Walter; this one was large and all-encompassing and safe, and oh, how very good it was to have an angel as a hugging friend. Brevity buried her face in his feathers.

“We couldn’t find you,” Rosia was saying calmly. The damsels appeared to be less bloodthirsty now that they’d found Brevity. They’d stopped pointing their weapons at Walter—Death! They’d been willing to fight Death? Brevity squelched a hysterical giggle—and they’d gathered around Brevity and Rami like a protective swarm. “We looked everywhere. We cannot lose our librarian. It is against the rules.”

“I knew Hell had to be involved,” Rami explained softly. His voice was a rumble through his chest under Brevity’s chin. “I was going to come alone, but the ladies would not hear of it.”

“She is our librarian,” Rosia said simply.

Theirs. Brevity had people. People who would notice when she was gone, who would go looking for her, even to the point of challenging Hell itself, to make sure she was okay. The tears choked her again and Brevity covered her face with both hands.

“Hey. You’re safe. You went ahead and saved yourself and you’re safe now, shhh.” Rami was right there, pulling her arms gently down. He wrapped her up in a hug again, safe and undemanding. “We were coming for you. We’ll always come for you. You’re home now.”

And Brevity believed him.