The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,55

come. He listened but couldn’t hear the copper cat’s paws stalking across the moss behind them. “There’s one more thing we should investigate while we’re in this realm.”

“In the library?”

“No,” Hero said. “But perhaps it’s adjacent. The golem mentioned the muses—they’re a Greek creature, too, right?”

15

CLAIRE

Myrrh. First thing I did was investigate the material evidence. No, not the stories or characters—everything has been quiet on that front. But between my lessons with Bjorn, I have been conducting a clandestine study of the paper. I’m not so dead that I have forgotten haggling with the ragmen for my linens. Not yet. Provenance! Everything comes from something. Pages are made and remade: that’s the story I’m interested in.

First observation: there’s no sizing, no coating over the paper to keep it from absorbing ink too quickly as it dries. Which would seem impossible. What surface is made to absorb everything? What ink?

The coating a paper has to keep ink from soaking in immediately and feathering is going to be unique to the environment. A flour-based size works admirably in the dry desert but quickly turns to rot in humid countries. What are the material concerns of an immaterial, immortal library?

Apprentice Librarian Fleur Michel, 1736 CE

TO A MODERN EYE, ink looked like water. Colored water perhaps, like poorly brewed tea or the garishly colored sugar drinks of her youth. Claire knew better. She had been alive at the turn of that era, when the incendiary grit and gristle of war had led to a boom of new technologies, new ways of doing things. She’d started school learning her letters with fountain pens, but by the time she’d matriculated into the workforce, all the modern workplaces were driven by the plastic milled barrels of ballpoint. When it dried up, a pen was tossed, not refilled. What a wasteful idea that was. Ink became something that was a minor component of the pen, not the fuel for it.

There wasn’t a lot left that Claire could remember of her life on Earth, but she remembered the language of inks. The viscosity and flow, the way some inks dried on cheap paper, feathered and bone bleak, while others went onto fine vellum paper like a sigh, changing from dark to light in a single stroke. Inks had temperaments, personalities. And inks left marks, smudged fingers, smeared words, lost meanings.

A sound, like a weaponized rusty hinge, broke her concentration. Something pinched the end of one of her braids and pulled. It was a brief tug, a demand for attention. Bird cocked her head, regarding her with one flat eye and obvious accusation.

“Right, attributes.” Claire sighed, remembering to straighten her back for the first time in hours. The ache was a welcome change of pace. “It is slow to dry. A supernaturally high viscosity.” Claire ticked off the characteristics on her stained hand again. Bird appeared to listen intently but might have just been watching for treats. “Iridescent sheen when wet, but dries to a matte finish. Waterproof, tamperproof, smear-proof. Obviously.” Her blackened fingernails felt chalky to the touch.

The secret was here, in the evidence. Her talk with Walter had told her that much. She just needed to verify her hunch. Ink did not exist without the book. It could not be replicated, borrowed, or transplanted—though gods knew she’d tried countless times when attempting to repair Hero. A book could only hold the ink it remembered. A book was paper and ink together, existing as the story slept.

So, without paper there should be no ink. The books lost to the coup had burned, a tragedy that she was almost grateful she only remembered as aftermath. The haunted look Brevity got when talking about the burning was enough. The stories that had been preserved in those books died, trapped in so much ash. The ash that had been everywhere. Claire had spent days afterward afraid to wash her hands. It felt sacrilegious; it felt cruel.

She adjusted the bright light over the worktable, as if that would reveal anything more than her own reflection. The Claire in the ink was cast in shades of black, staring out at her from the pitiless surface like an omen of what was to come. Claire rubbed her clean hand against the gooseflesh that crept up the back of her neck. There was barely enough liquid in the bowl to coat the bottom, but light didn’t penetrate it at all. The ink had a lubricated loll when Claire tilted the bowl from side to side.