space between. Finally, Leto coughed and pointed. “Something’s wrong with the gargoyle, I think.”
“Right.” Claire embraced the diversion. She approached the gargoyle and ran a motherly hand over one flank as she murmured, “Oh, my friend. What did those bullies do to you . . . ?”
It was the first opportunity that Rami had to watch her work. Claire circled the giant stone statue once. She stopped and ran a hand up and down one shoulder, as if working her fingers along a seam. Then she nodded to herself and began sorting through the beads bound to her wrist. When she found what she was looking for, she hauled herself up one side of the creature, bare feet braced on the gargoyle’s haunch, and twisted a large colorless bauble and rapped it along the stone.
On the third rap, the creature shuddered to life.
Rami and Leto had to dodge as the gargoyle’s wings swept around. The creature released an infuriated howl that had been caught in its throat, and its dimensional flickering increased. Claire had to hang on to the curve of its shoulder to keep from being displaced. “Easy, old friend.”
The gargoyle seemed to calm with a few more murmured words from the librarian, though Rami could not look directly at its face to see what specific effect they had. After a moment, it crouched to gently allow Claire to clamber off. She patted its haunch and straightened her muddled skirts.
Rami eyed the collection of jewels that hung around Claire’s neck. When he looked at them just so, the air filled with whispers. “Are those what I think they are?”
Claire turned to him with a sour smile. “I made a supply run before coming here. Picked up a couple things, made a few friends. The Arcane Wing is shockingly unattended right now.”
“Are they strong enough to bring down the ward, then?”
She shook her head. “Not nearly powerful enough.” Claire reached into one skirt pocket and withdrew her hand, closed over something. A cruel smile twisted at her lips. A smile that suddenly spoke less of heartache and more of dark, vengeful things.
“But this is.”
She opened her fingers and a crumpled scrap of paper, pillowed by cloth, drifted on her palm. A familiar scrap of paper. A scrap of paper that glimmered with dark green script and whispered of destruction and had started this whole mess.
Rami’s eyes widened, and so did Claire’s wicked smile. “I’d hoped to save it for Andras’s traitorous face, but this will have to do.” The sound of beating wings and dark tidings rushed closer, and a gust of air stirred them from around the corner. Claire canted her head up, a gleam in her eye. “Will you join us, Watcher?”
39
BREVITY
Stories can die. Of course they can. Ask any author who’s had an idea wither in their head, fail to thrive and bear fruit. Or a book that spoke to you as a child but upon revisiting it was silent and empty. Stories can die from neglect, from abuse, from rot. Even war, as Shakespeare warned, can turn books to graves.
We seek to preserve the books, of course. But we forget the flip side of that duty: treasure what we have. Honor the stories that speak to you, that give you something you need to keep going. Cherish stories while they are here.
There’s a reason the unwritten live on something as fragile as paper.
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1974 CE
A CHARACTER’S COLORS FADE when its book is destroyed.
Brevity stared at Aurora’s unmoving face, her heart a fist in her chest. If you were human, and if you closed those eyes, she might just be napping. Sleeping anywhere—balanced on books, on the couch in the suite— as she was prone to do.
If you did not look down and see the jagged holes that had been carved through her thin cotton jumpsuit and the tiny chest beneath. If you did not see the flurry of shredded, ink-stained paper that littered the character’s body. If you were not a muse who could see the absence of light where color should have bloomed.
Brevity knelt and picked up a scrap of paper that eddied by, rubbing her thumb over it. She tried to catch her breath, to hold on to the idea of how they’d gotten here; the fall had been so fast.
Not all the damsels had chosen to fight. Some had retreated into their books, but enough had decided to stay that Brevity and Hero felt they could mount a proper defense.