the mist had them.
21
CLAIRE
Myrrh. I wanted to be the one to figure it out. I admit it. Might be why I’ve held on for so long. I’m a foolish old man, and after the first couple of centuries here I thought, hell, this would do it. This was why I was here. I would be the one to kick down this house of questions. The song of the books—I thought if I listened long enough they would sing to me too.
But my apprentice is here and I’m still no closer to the answer. Smart as a whip, for a Norman. Well, leave the glory to her. I can keep on mulling about it in my cups in Valhalla. They’ll have to allow a doddering old man his thoughts.
Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1711 CE
IN RETROSPECT, CLAIRE HAD never appreciated Brevity enough. This was a fact she was aware of already. It was a given that Brevity was a better, smarter, more loyal assistant than Claire had deserved. But thank gods that, up till now, Brevity’s good intentions had aligned with Claire’s own.
Because when she put her mind to it, that muse was devious.
Claire had the ink in an examination tray, under a magnifying glass, before she realized the switch. And she could hardly complain, because a sample of unwritten damsel ink was what she’d been after in the first place. Not that it had revealed much. The damsel ink sample lolled in the clear tray, leaving behind isolated droplets in its wake. It dried—slowly, but it did dry—adhering to paper and fingers and flaking away harmlessly as ink should.
Claire should have been more concerned about the vial that’d been swapped: the vial of their unwritten ink. It was right that the Arcane Wing should keep account of the ink, at least until they understood it fully. Claire should return to the Unwritten Wing and call for fair play. But every time she collected the intention to do just that, Brevity’s horrified face came back to her. Claire had taken Lucille’s ink and Brevity had looked at her like she was a monster. Brevity, the cheerful woman who had stood by her side through almost thirty years of mishandling the Library. She’d seen Claire at her worst, but Claire had found a new way to step over the line.
Claire had been scared and acted rashly; she had. She could admit that much. But she didn’t want to face her again right now. Brevity was the one person who could cause that uneasy, oily feeling of shame in Claire’s head. And there was enough interfering with her thinking as it was. For instance, there appeared to be a soliloquy going on past the open doors, just outside of eyesight.
“Bird,” Claire said without looking up. The sound of dusty feathers fluffing up and resettling told her she’d been heard. “Is there a Shakespeare knockoff in the hallway, yes or no?”
Hard claws tapped softly against metal as the raven shuffled along her perch on the back of the opposite chair. She cocked her head sideways, then made a sound akin to a tuba in mid-childbirth.
“No, that’s what I thought.” Claire sighed, but the phantom sounds faded, as they always did when she had Bird to confirm or deny. If the price of mental clarity was talking to birds, Claire would take it. If the ink eating her arm wanted to communicate, it could damn well just spell it out.
A new noise replaced the old and increased too quickly for Claire to get Bird’s opinion on the matter. Giant footfalls echoed up the hallway before shoulders large enough to block the light filled up the doorway.
“Walter?” Claire stood, ignoring Bird as she shot into the air and screeched her displeasure at the racket. The large gatekeeper had to duck his shoulders just so to squeeze through the Arcane Wing’s double doors.
“Sorry about ta interruption, Miss Claire. I wouldn’t have bothered you but the other one was real sure you’d know what to do.”
The opportunities for Claire to know the correct thing to do were infrequent lately. She was about to tell Walter as much until he turned clear of the doorway. Hero was cradled in Walter’s scarred hands and unmoving. His face was pale and drawn but Claire couldn’t see any injuries until she caught sight of his foot, smearing ink down the side of Walter’s faded shirt.
“Sweet harpies,” Claire swore under her breath. “Set him on the couch, Walter. Foot on the ottoman, please.”
Rami