his own goals?
Thick walls and thick glass cut out the city’s murmur, the creak of the spell-vanes on the roofs above. But his office in the Court was not far from the Library, and Deed could almost hear the weight of history, years of hushed whispers in marble corridors, years of policy-making. But now the Skein were gone. Deed smiled, thinking of that. Over there, the Librarians believed they were the ones running the world-and so they had been, but only on the microcosm. The macrocosm, ah, now that was something else entirely.
“Abbot General,” the woman said. “What is it? You’re making me nervous.” She stood, just inside the door, her feet on the outer border of the Persian carpet.
“Perhaps you should be nervous,” he said, without turning his head. He tapped the tightly-rolled scroll on the study’s windowsill. “It’s falling to us, Darya. Did you ever think you’d see that day?”
“No. But maybe-you did?” There was the faintest trace of accusation in her voice, and he grinned, turning to her at last. Amusing, how she tried not to recoil.
“
“I
“Abbot General? Has something amused you?” Darya asked, and for a second there was a feral flash in her sea-coloured eyes.
“A great many things amuse me,” Deed told her. “But now, I need you to do something. A nice little trip to the Library.”
She was looking at him now. “The Library? But-”
“No one will
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to be charming, Darya, which shouldn’t be too difficult.” He smiled, winningly. “I want you to make an appointment with a gentleman named Jehan True. I’ve spoken to him in the guise of one of my other personas, a professor from the Spellmarkt, and mentioned my delightful young cousin, Mage Darya Nem, all the way from the Northern Quarter and keen to make a start on her postgraduate research. A young lady who is very eager to see certain elements of the Hidden Collection. I’ve said nothing about you being of the Court, don’t worry. Anyway, in the highly unlikely event that you were troubled by a surfeit of conscience, I
Darya looked doubtful, but Deed knew this was due to caution, not inexperience. “You’ve done this before, Darya. And so well, too.” He pitched his voice lower, verging on the hypnotic, and though she was of disir blood she failed to notice it.
Darya nodded, once, as mechanically as a golem, and rose. He held the door open for her as she left and watched her recede down the hallway, her heels clicking on the old wooden floor.
Outside, the sun had gone behind a cloud. The city was once more grey and cold. The roses looked out of place, as though they had sprung before their season. Deed felt himself strip down with the day, his face becoming less human, closer to his ravening ancestry. He knew that if he looked in a mirror right now, the bones would be blade-sharp, the eyes behind the expensive rimless spectacles milky or night-dark, the shadow of the unhuman rippling beneath the skin. He preferred it this way: it was sometimes difficult to maintain the facade. But just in case, he took a breath and settled back into the human once more-a man still relatively young, snow-white undershirt, small starched ruff, black tunic, everything perfectly correct. The distinguished contributor to distinguished literary collections. The distinguished Abbot General of the Court. He liked that adjective. What could be more suitable?
It was time to make another attempt. Far away, he could feel the planets moving into alignment, Jupiter a great lamp in the heavens. The familiar aspects of the World Tree were briefly imposed on his vision, with himself surrounded by the sphere of Malkuth at the base of the tree. The Dead Road beckoned beyond the confines of the city of Worldsoul, beyond the Liminality itself. For a moment, the whole universe glittered around him, gloriously outlined. He glimpsed Earth, and Earth’s moon; the planets beyond in the realm to which Worldsoul adjoined, a dimly-seen neighbour, visible only in humanity’s dreams.
Deed raised a hand. The plain iron band on his index finger flashed. Deed stepped through the hole created in the air, leaving the opulence of his study behind.
Beyond, it was difficult to breathe. The Dead Road seemed even narrower than before, even more restricted. It wasn’t the only storyway, by no means the only way into the nevergone, but it was one of the most dangerous. Deed fought for breath, ramped up the entry spell but felt his features once more slip and slide. In the formal suit, his limbs thinned, sharpened, elongated, his clothes shifting with the change. The starched ruff bit into his throat like sharp little teeth. He tried to get a glimpse, at least, of what he sought but-as ever-it eluded him. Frantically, he parted the swirling vapours with his hands, catching snatches of vision-a white city beside an azure sea, a long reach of birch forest-but not a glimpse of the thing he was looking for, the thing he knew was finally within his reach.
Suddenly, amazingly, there it was: an immense pale-columned building, the Grecian roof slightly scorched with fire but still bearing the golden letters on its architrave. The Great Library, in sight at last, but in another time than his own. Deed opened his mouth to speak the first words of the spell-
But then the world woke up. It flung him backwards, the mist swirling up and filling his mouth so that he choked. He was hurled back onto the Persian carpet and it was fortunate, he thought a moment later, that the windows were indeed so thick, for the silence swallowed his roar of fury.
Three
Shadow, stepping into the Medina, glimpsed herself reflected in the shining surface of a copper pot. In the curving metal, she looked like a fragment of sky, no features visible, but Shadow didn’t believe in taking chances. She thickened the azure veil a little further. Suleiman had magics learned in the Great Desert, conjurations stolen from the back alleys of Cairo and the cedar groves outside Baalbec, and from worlds other and further than Earth. One of those magics was said to be the charism of discernment of disguises. A charism perhaps, but Shadow doubted that it came from God.
She wasn’t in disguise, not really. The veil permitted a greater degree of communion with the divine, shielding her from the invasions of the worlds, unless she chose to invite someone in. To an ordinary person, it would look like just another veil: its secrets were well hidden. Shadow had confided the central mystery to only one other