Worldsoul

Suleiman inclined his head. “Very well. I understand your reservations, even if I do not agree with them. I need not caution you to say nothing of this, to anyone. Now, we both have work to do.”

“I promise you my silence,” Shadow echoed, although she knew, as did he, that this was only a preliminary skirmish. The war was yet to come. As a servant girl ushered her through the door, a shaft of fragmented light fell on the girl’s face, illuminating it briefly through her veil. Milky eyes stared straight ahead, seeing nothing. Shadow nodded once, as she walked through the doors of the Has.

Outside, the humming throb of the Medina seemed oddly peaceful and Shadow’s sense of oppression lifted. She walked quickly down the narrow streets, leaving the veil in thinness but resisting the pleas and blandishments to buy saffron or linen or beans. Her head was spinning; she needed to get home, to the garret laboratory and silence. Suleiman would take action of some sort. It might be a long time coming or mere hours. This was the trouble. He knew he had her now, and even if it was months before he acted, he knew that the knowledge that he would act was enough to stop Shadow from doing anything unwise. A little alchemical puppet, dancing back through the Medina…

Through the Medina and out. Here, the streets of the Quarter were wider, but not by much. A boy on a brass scooter zipped past Shadow’s feet, nearly knocking her flat. She thought of shouting after him, thought better of it. His eyes, glimpsed in the fleeting rush, had been a deep and fiery gold. She walked slowly back through the afternoon heat and it was quieter now, the Quarter settling down before the evening cool, shutters bolted and doors locked to keep out the sun. She thought of the Has, its deceptive tranquillity, of the ifrit in its cage. She was glad to reach the crumbling tower that contained her own laboratory, to climb the baked earth steps to its summit.

Not many people were prepared to live in the city wall. It added to her cachet, the spice of risks taken, and moreover, because of the danger, it was cheap. Shadow ascended the stairs into darkness and spoke the words that opened the old oak door.

Once inside, she stepped past the table that held alembics and retorts. The morning’s experiment still bubbled, without the aid of flame. Shadow, putting aside the veil, sniffed it, recoiled, and went to the window to throw the shutters open. The wall curved off to her right, with a second tower some distance along its length. Shadow studied this for a moment and then her gaze flew outward, as if drawn by the magnet of the desert. The great dunes stretched to the horizon, endless colours and shadows, rolling up and down in patterns that were different every morning, and yet essentially the same. Shadow drew strength from her proximity to the desert; if she had to live within the city, it might as well be here, perched like a dove in the wall. She stared at the desert for a long time, trying to empty her mind of memories of Suleiman, of the caged ifrit. But it was not until the muezzin sang out across the Quarter, comforting in its regulation of the day, that she was able to gain a little peace, kneeling with her forehead touching the bare scrubbed boards, distantly noting little acid burns where an alembic had splashed, finding within the thread that led to God. And praying for delivery from the attention of Suleiman the Shah.

Seven

Mercy and Nerren went down to the security office later that morning, after the Elders had gone, and had spent an hour searching through the records. Their efforts had produced little and the Elders had been predictably querulous. What was it with senior Librarians? They’d presumably had the same adrenaline-filled life as any other staff member, but as soon as they passed retirement age and went on the council they became trembling and sheep-like and nervous. Perhaps it was some kind of reaction? She hoped it wouldn’t happen to her.

If she lived that long. Nerren and herself, by mutual accord, had not mentioned the episode in Section C to the Elders in case someone had a weak heart. Actually, there was a lot of other things they hadn’t told the Elders either, also by mutual accord.

Mercy was trying not to snap, a measure of her frustration. This was not Nerren’s fault, after all. Better to blame the Skein, whose vanishing had led the Library to its current state of instability. But she hated to think that they were failing; they had held the Library together for a year and now it was starting to crack…

This was paranoia, she told herself. There had been a few incursions, all dealt with. Library security knew what they were doing. The Citadel inspectors continued to oversee the longer term administration and, as Mercy’s earlier dismay had proved, they made regular checks.

Sulis was there in the office now, an Enforcer with twenty-three years behind her; a big, calm woman in grey. Massive ward bracelets enclosed her thick wrists; her hands were stiff with spellrings.

“It’s unlikely to be connected with the flower raids,” she was saying. Mercy, perched on the edge of Sulis’ desk, nodded.

“That’s what I thought. It feels totally different. This is something else, something from a much earlier time.” Mind you, we’ve all been wrong before.

“But we don’t know who this female entity is?”

“No,” Mercy admitted. “Who or what. I wounded her, I’m sure of that.”

“Jonah’s still looking at the blood. Wasn’t able to give me any quick conclusions. Whatever she is, she disappeared as soon as she left the Library. The spell filters couldn’t hold her.”

Mercy swore under her breath. As soon as she’d heard the female had left the building, the gnawing worry had grown.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Sulis said. She touched a bronze knob and the machine once more whirred into life, hissing with electric azure. “Actually, you can see from this that they’re functioning perfectly well. It’s just that with very old things, the magic’s correspondingly ancient. The filters can’t cope with it, because they don’t know how: the equipment’s too modern.”

“This is what pisses me off,” Mercy said. “We’ve got all these old texts-all these old stories-hoarded like a… a dragon’s gold, and no one seems to have done anything about them.”

Sulis did not reply, nor did she need to. It wasn’t as though the origins of the Library had been in any way scientific. The Skein had brought it through when the building had been set on fire-by enemies about whom the Skein had been remarkably closemouthed-the flames lighting the Egyptian night. Even though that was long ago now, they had just kept accumulating material. People all had their areas of expertise, but there was simply too much to analyse and it hadn’t been until relatively recently, Mercy reflected, that a proper cataloguing system had been brought in.

A different agenda for humans, was the charitable view. Charitable, but possibly not accurate.

“A collection, nothing more. But the Skein were able to handle it. And we-”

“Well,” Sulis said, mildly. “We’re doing our best.”

“But what if that’s not good enough?”

It was not until mid-afternoon that a positive sighting came in. Someone had seen an odd thing on Orchis Hill, crouching in a back alley. Mercy and Nerren got there as soon as they heard, taking the monorail from the stop at the back of the Citadel. It was the fastest means of transport they had, which wasn’t saying a lot. Mercy stared out of the window as the monorail creaked along, fingering the Irish sword, wondering how long it would be before the monorail fell into disuse. Its brass wheels clanked; the red velvet seats were faded and threadbare. Fireweed and oleander grew along the rusting tracks. Mercy saw a fox slink into the weeds, not hurrying, evidently undisturbed by the nearness of the rattling vehicle. What would it be like, to live in a city you could really change, that did not alter itself around you? Ask one of the Earthbound. Ask one of the Skein.

The monorail cranked on and Mercy grew more irritable with every passing mile. Through Sweetside, across the Lesser Channel, under the long-browed hill of Ferria Gracia with its white balconied buildings. Graffiti was inscribed everywhere along the sidings: curling, glowing words of power. Mercy winced. The Skein had ruthlessly eradicated this in their day, just as they had maintained the monorail, and made Worldsoul run efficiently. Had they really been kidnapped, as popular wisdom claimed? Or had they removed themselves, impatient parents casting their children into independence? It seemed impossible that she might never know.

Her meditations were interrupted by a gasp from Nerren. Towards the front of the monorail, the sky had turned to rose. Mercy had a moment to think, But it isn’t sunset yet-before she saw the molten