38

CLAIRE

Maybe what makes a library isn’t what it has, but what it does.

Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1433 CE

I won’t surrender to Malphas, but I will surrender to the Library. Walter says this will work—technically, he doesn’t say it will not work, which is all I have to go on. I’m sorry, Revka, there’s no time to tell you why I have to do this. But if it works—if there’s the narrowest chance it works—I’ll never have really left you. The Library will belong to itself.

A demon can’t conquer what isn’t there. When Malphas breaks that door, she will find the librarian’s desk empty.

Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE

“Oh.” Hero somehow managed to hobble next to her, shoeless on one foot, and make it look like a casual stroll in the midst of chaos. “Is that all? I thought it was something bad.”

“It is bad! Stop being cheeky.” The beams in the ceiling of the Unwritten Wing abruptly decided to sweep down, and Claire had to duck to miss getting beaned as they lurched their way through the stacks. It was urgent that they get back to the others in the damsel suite. The Library was tearing itself apart trying to contort to fit the space where Hell had once been. “If we don’t anchor the Library to a new realm or something solid in short order, we’ll . . .” Claire stopped as she realized she wasn’t sure what happened to spirits and souls that fell into the void of pathways between afterlife realms. Judging from what she’d seen on the raven roads and elsewhere in the afterlife, it couldn’t be anything good. “How long do we have?” She directed the question to Rami.

He startled, as if just realizing that he was likely the closest thing to an expert they would have. The effect was to turn his craggy features even more troubled. “It would be difficult to say. The Library—anything in the afterlife—is a construct fueled by divine—”

“Guess faster, dear,” Hero murmured as he stepped around an armchair that had sprouted something that appeared to be cosmic tentacles. Books had scattered everywhere across the floor and it was hard not to cringe. Claire knew they were presented with bigger problems, but books were lying with pressed spines, for gods’ sakes.

“An hour, maybe,” Rami admitted grimly.

“We need more time than that.” Claire was relieved when the front pier of the damsel suite came into view. With the water gone, the wing had regained some of its proportions, which made the path to the door scalable. Figures were clustered at the edge, and Claire recognized Brevity’s blue and tattoo-scarred arm as she pulled her up.

“Inside, quick!” Brevity dragged Claire into the damsel suite and Claire did not waste time arguing. The suite was packed, and it appeared every awake book and guest librarian had crowded into the sitting room to avoid the chaos outside.

Claire’s mind raced, trying to tally who was here and who wasn’t, but the sense that a final countdown had inevitably begun to tick drove other logical thoughts out of her head. She looked to Brevity. “When did it start?”

“Not long before we spotted you. Is it Malphas . . . ?”

“She’s not attacking, just the opposite.”

“We’re being set adrift.” Bjorn came to the correct assessment swiftly. His beard jumped in a furious expression. “Left ta shipwreck by ourselves.”

“We did ask for our freedom,” Hero said dryly.

“Free to destroy ourselves,” Claire said. “And with all the wings gathered here, if the Unwritten Wing is destroyed, so is the entire Library.”

“The souls.” The teal blush drained from Brevity’s cheeks.

“Ours included.” Claire accepted a cup of tea from Echo. The spirit laid a hand on her, and abruptly her sodden clothes and locks were dry again. She nodded a silent thanks before focusing on the doom at hand.

They had been spinning their wheels up until now. Hero and Rami had tried to secure them a realm and only returned by the skin of their teeth. Claire had tried to recruit Walter but only returned with a riddle. The one thing they had managed—securing a deal with Hell—now threatened to destroy them in short order. She thought she had tricked Malphas, but it was Claire who had been outwitted. If the Library tore itself apart in the void, anyone, including the grand general of Hell, could swoop in and sweep up what was left like vultures.

Malphas would probably enjoy gnawing on the remains of Claire’s soul. The same way she likely enjoyed Poppaea’s.

“Did she know?” Claire wondered.

Rami ignored the question entirely. “We need to move quickly. We have to find something that will shore up the Library’s . . .” He faltered. “The Library’s sense of self.”

Hero finished toweling off his hair—Echo had not helped him dry off. He gave Rami a rueful look between the limp curls of copper hair in his face. “What do you want us to do, whisper affirmations and sweet nothings to it?”

Hero might have been remarking on the weather for all Rami noticed his snark. Rami turned to Claire and Brevity. “There’s always a logic to it. No matter how mercurial a realm seems, it’s got a logic that holds it together. Values, metaphors.” When neither of them proposed a solution, Rami sighed in frustration. “What is a library made of?”

“Books?” Brevity offered uncertainly.

“Pah!” Bjorn sat on the back of a sofa and crossed his arms. “Not always.”

Bjorn’s library housed ghosts and memories. Duat had brought songs. Echo’s pools had guarded letters and missives. No, a library wasn’t just a pile of books.

“Stories,” Iambe suggested.

“Yes and no,” Rosia murmured. She was at the forefront of the collection of damsels that had the constitution and desire to stay awake while the chaos storm wreaked havoc on the books. She’d lost some of her dreamy quality since her encounter with the unwritten ink, but she still had the maddening habit of speaking in riddles.

Claire chewed on her thumb and tried an answer that felt wrong even as she said it: “Souls.”

“We’ve never had to steal souls before; ain’t gonna start now,” Bjorn said to the stout agreement of the other librarians in the room. She felt a distinct chill from the damsels listening in.

Claire rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t as if I suggested to go snatching children off the street,” she grumbled. She understood that she’d garnered a reputation for being harsh and unorthodox, but, really, was she that bad?

Perhaps she didn’t want to hear the answer to that.

A handful of other suggestions came from the gathered group, but Claire was distracted by the intense way Rosia stared at her. The damsel had been a character from a gothic ghost story until she’d sunk into a pool of ink—the last remains of the destroyed books lost to Andras’s coup—and it had somehow disentangled her from her book. It had done much the same to Hero, only under much more traumatic circumstances. Claire still wasn’t sure how that had worked, or what, precisely, that made Rosia and Hero. No longer characters, certainly. They lived fates and stories independent of a book that no longer existed. They still retained all their fictional qualities—could still “read” any book in the Library simply by touching it. The Unwritten Wing had still accepted them both as part of the Library, though the damsels seemed to treat both Hero and Rosia with a kind of respect. Rosia, because she had become one of their internal leaders. Hero, because he had read— listened, lived, remembered—the stories of the Dust Wing while he was there. They called him . . .

“Oh.” All eyes swiveled to focus on Claire. She weighed the answer again, but it felt too true to disregard. “Readers. A Library’s purpose is to exist for future readers, people.”

“How do we get more readers?” Iambe asked with a skeptical air. “It’s not as if we have a list of patrons with borrowing privileges.”

That had always been the isolationist nature of the Library. Just librarians, no readers. Occasionally denizens of their host realms wandered in, but no one ever borrowed a book or story of any kind, at least not long enough to learn it. They hardly even had a right to call themselves a library. An archive, perhaps, or a tomb. The only difference between the Unwritten Wing and the Dust Wing was better lighting. Claire’s confidence flagged until a thud on the table behind her made her nearly startle out of her skin.

“We got plenty of readers. Right here.” Brevity leaned on the tall stack of books she’d just dropped on the table. Rosia perched beside her with a look at the librarian that was half adoration. “When’s the last time any of us have had a story hour?”

At the bashful murmurs around the room, Brevity straightened up, alarmed. “When’s the last time anyone has read any of their wing’s own materials?”

“You can’t just go reading feral like that!” Bjorn sounded scandalized. “It ain’t allowed!”

“Reading books runs the risk of waking them up, we’re warned,” Claire said with a dry half smile and glance at Hero. Not that all librarians listened. It was cruel to condemn a booklover to a trove full of new books and tell them not to touch them.

“Good!” Brevity pounded the top book and clambered up on the table. “Don’t we want them to wake up and fight for themselves? We can’t do this on our own. The wing needs to save itself.”

“You want us to read?” Iambe sounded amused.

“No, I want y’all to tell the stories. Read ’em out loud if you have to. I . . .” Brevity’s confidence stumbled a little. She looked to Claire for support. “It could work, right?”

Reading always did something. Especially in their Library. Even in the living world, reading did things. That was the magic and that was the danger. Some stories entertained you; some intrigued you; some saved your life. If Claire hadn’t sought out her own books—or if Claire had just written them in the first place—would any of them be here? It was always a gamble, beginning a story. You could never be certain of the end.

But that had never deterred any reader.

“It’s worth a try,” Claire said.

Brevity grabbed a book at random. It was navy and dappled with specks of silver that spun into a nebula of stars. She threatened the crowd with it. “Who’ll read first?”

“Oh, give it,” Bjorn grumbled. He grabbed it out of her hand and lowered himself into the armchair nearest the fire with a groan. “Gods, this place needs some good furs and ale. Okay, librarians and letterfolk, listen close.”

He began to read, jumping into what sounded like a fantastical description of a salvage mission in space. He started out slow, his rough Scandinavian burr stumbling over the technical and make-believe. But Bjorn, a born storyteller, quickly found his cadence and the room changed.

Quiet gathered, spreading out of the empty spaces of the damsel suite to pool and transform into something focused, something alive. The damsels drew up blankets and settees. Librarians gradually loosened their shoulders. Echo settled to a mere reflection in her pool to listen, quietly repeating words now and then for dramatic effect.

The alchemy of word and will was a subtle one. The story was engaging enough that even Claire almost missed the slow pulse of air against her cheek. She turned and saw the sturdy frame of the suite door reassert itself, unwinding its wobbling ribbons to become solid wood and iron again. It felt as if a thin bubble had formed, pushed outward with each breath Bjorn drew to speak, and the Library found a fulcrum of new resolve.

The glass pane in the door wobbled, undecided on whether it was made of glass or chaos-laced Jell-O. “Bubble” was the right term—fragile and temporary.

“This only buys time,” Iambe almost echoed her thoughts in a low voice at her elbow. “We still need a realm.”

“If you have any ideas, I am accepting suggestions.” Claire drew her attention back. Bjorn was in the warp and weft of a tale now, gesturing with his free arm as he occasionally glanced at the book and read a particular passage. The stars in the book’s leather cover appeared to almost twinkle. The book had readers, readers for the first time in centuries, and it was glowing under the attention.

They had no shortage of books, but Claire wondered how long the attending librarians and damsels could hold up. It took no small amount of effort to tell a story. And a good story asked something of its reader as well. Iambe was right; this would only buy them time.

“I have one.” Hero sat with his elbows on his knees on the couch, inspecting his hands. He looked up reluctantly. “There’s one more wing we haven’t tried.”

Claire frowned. “Nonsense. All twelve librarians are accounted for—”

“There’s thirteen wings of the Library,” Rami said softly. He was standing behind the couch at Hero’s back.

“Thirteen—” Brevity gasped, then forced her voice low in order to not disturb the story that was in progress. “You mean the Dust Wing.”

“You can’t be serious.” But the way Rami and Hero exchanged a glance told Claire that they were. She took a breath. “But the Dust Wing has no librarian.”

“This was never about gathering librarians,” Hero reminded her, and there was a muddle of gentleness in his voice that Claire immediately hated. “It was about gathering wings, gathering stories. And the Dust Wing counts.”

Claire felt the fear in her gut harden. “No. I won’t send you back there. Not if there’s any other way.”

“You don’t need to,” Hero said with a stunning smile. “Ramiel can take me. Angel express.”

Rami was already wincing as Claire pivoted. She resisted the urge to point. “You are condoning this?”

“Hero knows the books. Even better than you, and definitely better than me.” Rami spoke slowly, as if trying to telegraph the most understanding with each word. “If he says we need the Dust Wing, then we need them.”

“They don’t deserve to be forgotten. Again,” Hero said to his hands.

Claire was shaking her head. “That place nearly killed you, Hero.”

“Actually, it did kill me,” Hero corrected brightly. “It just didn’t take. Listen—Claire, I can do this. I know I can do this. I have to do this.”

The anger drained out of Claire. “The last time you convinced me you had to do something, it also ended in the Dust Wing. No.”

The tilt of Hero’s smile fell. They both remembered their desperate bid to understand the unwritten ink, how Hero had convinced Claire to try it on his book. Claire could still see the elation on his face when he’d started to remember the missing pages of his story. She could still taste the ash and bile of terror as it had instead eaten through his book from the inside out and he’d fallen apart.

“This is different,” he said softly, after too long a pause. “You said yourself that this is all for nothing unless we gather them all.”

Claire was already shaking her head, hardening and frosting over. “Not like this. No, I won’t do it, Hero. We’ll find a different way.”

“Claire—”

“You’ll do it,” Brevity said.

It was said with such utter confidence that Claire only managed to blink at the muse for a moment. “I certainly will not.”

“You will. Because Hero’s right, and you know he’s right. Either we do this all together—all the libraries, all the stories—or we don’t do this at all. If anyone can speak to the Dust Wing, it’s Hero. He’s the only one who the books there have ever spoken to. We’re running out of time and I can’t name an alternative.” Brevity’s voice grew stronger as she rattled off her reasoning, steel growing in her stance as she raised her chin to defy Claire. “Can you?”

“I—we don’t—I won’t sacrifice anyone else! Not . . . not anymore.” The only reason Claire was able to keep her voice down was because it trembled and broke. And then it wasn’t so much that the icy veneer of Claire’s composure cracked, but the whole glacial reserve of her walls came down. A shudder ran through her, her breath caught, and the words came out in a stumbling, halting whisper. “The last time broke me.”

Hero’s hands came up and cupped Claire’s downturned face in a soft way he’d never dared before. They were not made for soft things, Claire and Hero. Their history was a prickly beast of antagonism and tension and then reserve, love spoken in the way they were unwilling to hurt each other in the ways they knew they could. But to hell with reserve, with history.

Hero’s expression was open, tentative, when he gently turned her gaze up. He dragged his thumbs through the tears. And Hero, written to be glorious and dramatic and endlessly witty and reviled, said nothing. And for once, Claire had no words for him either, not here at the end of all their stories. Hero put his lips to a different use instead, placing a feather-soft kiss on one cheek, then the other.

Claire gave one tremble, just one, then fell into his chest, holding him tight. If Rami was the anchor, the stone, then Claire was the water. Ice turned water turned air. He wrapped his arms around her. But then, like water, like air, she knew they couldn’t stay this way. Water and air were meant to let go.

“Not a book,” Hero muttered softly into her hair, and Claire hoped he could feel when she smiled.

“Not an author,” Claire said into his chest.

“Um . . .” Claire opened her eyes to see Brevity standing a hesitant distance away. She hadn’t even noticed she’d slipped off—presumably to give them this time—and had returned with a Library loan slip in hand. “Are you sure? Really sure?”

“Really, really sure.” Hero’s voice was subdued and rough. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

Claire’s eyes were still wet, but she drew back with a long breath. “I’ll be here. I’ll come find you if you don’t.”

“I know you will.” Hero smiled. “Warden.”

“Book,” Claire returned fondly.

Brevity put a hand on Hero’s arm. “Do what we got to do.” Hero was already off the couch and headed for the door, Rami a step behind. Brevity raised her voice. “And be careful, yeah?”

Hero raised his hand in acknowledgment without turning around. Claire thought they would depart without a word, but Hero slowed as they passed the couch again, just long enough to press an uncharacteristically soft kiss to her temple. Rami, ever mindful of propriety, kissed her hand. The door closed, and she found herself clasping the hand to her chest, holding on to the lingering ghost of warmth they’d left behind. Heart and head.

It felt like a long time after the door closed before Claire lowered her hand from her chest and straightened. She gathered up her teacup and focused on the storytelling session in progress. Bjorn’s story would wrap up soon; they would need another reader to keep going. They had to keep going. Without a realm, a god, or a guide, they still had one another. That was enough for any story, wasn’t it? Claire picked up the nearest book from the stack on the table. “Let’s get to work.”