“Yes,” Pallas said quickly. He also watched Hero with a new shine, but it wasn’t quite as carnivorous as his sister’s. He leapt to his feet and fluttered a hand over his chiton before motioning to the open walkway that led inside. “Mother will be pleased for visitors.”
“Yes, she gets so little good conversation these days.” Iambe’s laugh was sharp, as if she’d just made a joke. Pallas spared them an uneasy look as he held aside the curtain and motioned them inside.
12
CLAIRE
The people to the south declared the time before now Jahiliyyah: a time of ignorance and darkness. If this place has really been abandoned and without care since the previous librarian, then that term may be appropriate. I understand enough now to imagine what damage might have come to stories left uncared for during that dark time. Muses abandoned without direction, books corrupting neighboring pages, forgetting themselves. The only reason no books were lost was because the entire wing was locked down.
Stories need a teller. Books need a reader. These unlived lives are nothing without humanity to anchor them, breathe life into the missing parts.
Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 609 CE
BIRD WINGED ALONG THE shadowed passage ahead of Claire, coming to rest on the scarred triple-wheel carving that loomed over the door to the transportation department. Claire hesitated in the shadow of the arch. Granite-heavy footsteps creeped against the floorboards, punctuated by the glittering tinkle of glass jars. Walter resembled a small boulder crouched behind the counter when Claire entered the room.
“Miss Lib— Miss Claire! Ma’am.” Walter punctuated his greeting with startled movements. He jolted upright, clutched the jar in his hands too tight, barely managing to set it down again before it could shatter. The whorls of nothing in his eye sockets appeared to spin particularly fast as he glanced around the small travel office and said again, “Ma’am.”
“Am I interrupting something, Walter?” Claire paused at the threshold, hands folded in front of her as she took in the state of the office. The arching walls were peppered with shelves, which were lined with row upon row of clear glass jars full of colored smoke. That was usual. What was unusual was the zigzag of lines through the air. Colors exploded and skidded away from their jars like comet tails, twisting and knotting with others before fading into the gloom.
Walter’s innocent look was composed of red teeth and bulbous scars, but it was authentic all the same. “No, ma’am. Just doing a bit of tidying up.”
“Tidying up?” Claire stepped to the side as a spiral of persimmon orange floated toward her head. “Really, Walter, your jars are bleeding everywhere.”
“Bleed—” Walter straightened so quickly a flight path of lime green had to divert around him in a tight corkscrew maneuver. The void in his eyes slowed nearly to a stop as he stared at Claire. “You can see that, ma’am? You never said ya could—” His gaze tracked down to Claire’s stained hand and stopped. It was a peculiar feeling when something as large as Walter froze in place. “Miss Claire, I reckon you got a story to tell me.”
A sigh welled up in Claire’s chest, and with it every dreg of exhaustion she’d tamped down since seeing Rosia disappear into the ink pool in the Arcane Wing. Walter produced a stool from behind the counter, and Claire retold the tale with her hands folded carefully on the claw-scarred countertop, ink black over soft brown.
By the time she reached the argument with Brevity, Walter’s brows had descended to nearly meet his nose. “You got yourself in a muddle.”
Claire’s lips quirked. “Well, if Death says it’s a muddle, then it must be bad.”
“I’m being serious. Serious as Sundays.” Walter hunched over, squinting at her hand with an earnest intensity. He gestured to the line of inspiration holding back the black. “That stopgap the others jury-rigged. It ain’t gonna hold forever, ma’am.”
“And what happens when it doesn’t? Since you seem to know so much about it.” Claire regretted the question as the sorrow sank into the nooks and crevices of Walter’s face. She cleared her throat and moved on. “That’s not precisely why I came to see you anyway. I—”
“Why don’t you make up with Miss Brevity?” Walter asked.
Bird made a noise that was akin to a goose being gently murdered, as if she was seconding the question. Claire’s smile became strained. “There’s nothing to make up, Walter. Brevity and I are fine.”
“If’n you were fine, she’d be here with you,” Walter said with solemnity.
“The Unwritten Wing has their own affairs, I’m sure. Brevity—” Brevity needed to be protected. Claire could not stand to be the cause of another ghost haunting Brev’s eyes. She just couldn’t. She pursed her lips around the words. “Brevity is too . . . distracted at the moment.”
It was true, even if not the truth. Claire thought again about the assessment in Probity’s first glance and the way the visiting muse was genial to Rami and Hero but curdled around the edges the moment Claire entered the room. When she’d been stained, it felt as if the visitor had helped against personal preference. The Muses Corps had never been her closest allies, even when she was librarian. But she hadn’t believed she’d warranted that kind of loathing, professionally.
Which left something personal. Claire simply did not have the time or temperament to deal with the personal. She was not inclined to tease out why some random muse didn’t care for her. It appeared she cared for Brevity with a sincere fondness from a long shared history. That was enough. At least
