Worldsoul

and she moved on to study the spines of a dark-bound set of books standing on a neighbouring shelf. All grimoires, but at the far end of the shelf beyond, the geas gave a violent start, like a startled horse, and in front of her she found a book with a bind-rune stamped on its skin cover and a title: The Winter Book. Bulls-eye! She took the book cautiously down from the shelf and opened it.

The book was written in what looked like Danish. From the scrolled gilt on its leather cover, she thought it was probably Victorian.

Perra said, “Someone is coming.”

“Shit!” Mercy had, with the assistance of the key, locked the door behind her, but Perra was right, she could hear shuffling sounds outside. She tucked The Winter Book under her jacket, darted to the end of the library and took refuge behind a stack. The library was relatively dimly lit, though Mercy could not see why, and hopefully large enough to avoid the person.

The door opened. Footsteps came along one of the rows, then stopped. Mercy held her breath. She didn’t think it was the same row from which she had taken the book and she hoped The Winter Book would keep its pages shut: books had been known to shout out before now. It must be nice, she thought bitterly, to live in a place like Earth, where inanimate objects didn’t have their own opinions. A jumbled montage of stories- millstones and necklaces and spinning wheels that shouted, “Help! Help!” when stolen-rapidly crossed Mercy’s mind’s eye. It was all Earth’s fault, anyway, for being a place where folk had imaginations. She clutched the book a little more tightly, but it did not speak.

The person was coming along the stacks. Mercy didn’t have any great impression of stealth, but if the person suspected she was there, why didn’t they simply accost her? Although it wasn’t like the Court to do things in an obvious manner.

The footsteps-a quick clicking tapping sound-abruptly stopped. Mercy looked down and saw that Perra was as still as a hunting cat. Only the tip of the ka’s leonine tail was twitching. She could hear a second, smaller ticking sound, but she did not know what that was. She was reminded of beetles, of bombs. She took a breath and peered, very cautiously, around the edge of the stack.

A woman stood further down the row, tapping a fountain pen against her teeth. It was this that had produced the clicking sound. The woman was young, with ice-blond hair bound up in a chignon. Her face was wide at the forehead, tapering to a pointed chin. As if she was aware of Mercy watching, she turned for a moment and looked down the row. Mercy caught her breath but the woman’s expression was absent, as if thinking. Her eyes, wide set, were a cold blue. She wore a black suit: a hobble skirt and a ruffled black jacket with a high collar. A cameo brooch clasped it at the neck; Mercy wondered what the cameo showed.

And high heels. With a sudden jolt, Mercy saw that the woman was not wearing shoes. Her bare ankles, visible beneath the long skirt, were pale skinned and extended to long spurs of spined bone. Her toes were talons. Appalled, Mercy looked at the girl’s hands; they, too, had long iron-coloured nails.

She heard the library door open and close. Someone said, “Darya?”

A male voice that slid across the skin. Mercy remembered the voice, a soothing doctor’s tone that reassured and held promises. Promises that were then violated.

“Abbot General?” Darya sounded nervous. Mercy was not entirely surprised.

“What are you looking for?” Deceptively casual.

“Why, I-just an idea.”

“What sort of idea?”

Darya was silent. Mercy saw her take a teetering step backwards on those bony spines of heels.

“What sort of idea, Darya?”

“About the Library. I remember-I heard something once… ”

Mercy instantly felt herself on the attack. It wasn’t a rational thing, but a magical one: an instinct which stemmed directly from the vows that she’d made at her initiation. Any attack on the Library was an attack on a Librarian, and Darya’s comments could not bode well. It didn’t quite work the other way, but it was close. She forced herself to remain still but her fingers itched to move towards the sword. Beside her, Perra gave her a warning glance.

“Enterprising, Darya,” Deed said. “Did I sanction this search?”

Mercy saw the girl become very still. “I thought-”

“Thinking’s good,” Deed said softly, and he reached out and drew a sigil in the air above Darya’s brow. The girl wavered, as if a line of light had passed through her and her expression grew blank. Mercy saw Deed reach out and pluck something from the centre of Darya’s forehead, before the glowing green sigil faded. Then he turned and slipped out of the library without a backward glance.

Darya swayed and her face shuddered, showing sharp bones beneath the skin. Mercy thought: disir. And as if she had spoken the word aloud, the girl’s head came up and her lips bared back in a hound’s grimace. Long teeth slid out of her upper jaw and the bones of her face began to shift and slip, the skin moulding itself to the new structure beneath.

Mercy rammed the book more securely into her jacket and drew the Irish sword.

Thirty-Eight

By now, Gremory and Shadow had climbed to the top of the fortress. They avoided the red threads filling every room and snaking along the passageways, and kept to the stairs, which were bare of the red material and made of stone. Narrow slit windows, the kind from which arrows could be fired, pierced the staircase at intervals and Shadow glanced out of these as they climbed. She realised, from these glimpses, that the landscape around them was changing.

“Look at that,” she said to the demon. Gremory came down a step or two and stood beside her.

“What do you see?”

“The desert’s not the same.” She did not think it was the sight that the spirit’s presence had lent her.

Gremory smiled as if a theory had been confirmed. “You’re right. It isn’t.”

They had come across pale golden sand, from the ridges of Elemiel’s shattered beehive hut. Looking back, however, the desert was now made of black and red grit, with high undulating ridges of dark shale. Shadow could see some kind of equipment in the distance from which they had come, like a mining rig. It was not moving, but it had certainly not been there when they’d crossed the desert the day before, or that morning. Further away, a huge metal wheel stood, also unmoving, below one of the ridges.

The demon, to Shadow’s alarm, appeared nonplussed. “This is new to me. Although I’ll confess it’s why I came up here. There are stories… a fortress, from which you can see different times. I’ve never seen this kind of country before.”

“Not even where you come from?”

The Duke of Hell gave a snort. “My country is nothing like this. It is magnificent-the oceans of fire, the iron cities, the massed legions with their banners. Nothing like this little landscape.”

“I do not think I would last long in Hell,” Shadow said.

“You are not a demon or a devil, an ifrit or a spirit, it’s true. But do not be too sure. Your new passenger might give you some immunity.” Gremory’s red gaze slid to Shadow’s face. “Perhaps I will take you there.”

“We’ve got to get out of here first,” Shadow said, concealing alarm.

They climbed higher, checking on the changing land through the windows. Two storeys up, it had altered again, becoming darker, the ground changing to a plain of slate. The machinery had gone but a second fort stood in the distance, as grey as a great ship and with the spires of radio masts at its summit. Shadow had never seen anything like it before, either, and said so. The demon was silent.

Eventually, they reached the top of the fortress. Here, it was blisteringly hot, but the wind occasionally lashing the summit in eddies was cold as ice. Shadow shivered. This was no place for humans and she wondered anew who had built the fortress, or whether it was the outer carapace of something living. The red threads reminded Shadow of seaweed, drifting in the world’s tide.

The top of the fortress was a flat paved surface, surrounded by battlements. Shadow and the demon walked across to the edge and looked down. Gremory did not seem to suffer from vertigo, but Shadow was obliged to hold