CHAPTER ONE
Kiela never thought the flames would reach the
library. She was dimly aware that most of the other librarians had fled
weeks ago, when the revolutionaries took the palace and defenestrated
the emperor in a rather dramatic display. But surely they wouldn’t touch
the library. After all, there were books here. Highly flammable, irreplaceable books.
The
Great Library of Alyssium, with its soaring spires, stained-glass
windows, and labyrinthine bookshelves, was the jewel of the Crescent
Islands Empire. Its hallowed stacks were filled with centuries-old
treatises, histories, studies, and (most importantly, in Kiela’s
opinion) spellbooks. Only the elite, the crème de la crème of the
scholars, were allowed to even view the spellbooks, as only the rarefied
few were permitted, by imperial law, to use magic.
She was
responsible for the spellbooks on the third floor, east wing. For the
past eleven years, she’d worked, slept, ate, and lived between the
shelves, which perhaps explained why, when she first smelled smoke, she
thought she’d simply left toast on the cookplate.
Just to be on
the safe side, earlier in the week, Kiela and her assistant Caz had
begun securing some of her favorite tomes in crates and stowing them on
one of the library boats, though she’d never truly believed evacuation
would be necessary. Cocooned within the stacks, far away from any whiff
of politics or violence, it was a pleasant game: if she were stranded on
a deserted island, which books would she most want to have with her?
Certainly The Grimoire on Plantwork, compiled in the year 357 by scholars Messembe and Cannin, as well as The Manipulation of Weather Patterns, a Study of the Effects of Spellwork on the Breeding Habits of Eastern Puffins, which was a fascinating and groundbreaking work that—
Caz
swung by his leaves into the aisle where she sat, cross-legged, in
front of a pile of books. A spider plant, he was roughly the size of a
farm dog but comprised entirely of greenery, with a knot of roots
holding soil at his core. He was the smartest assistant she’d ever had,
though also, perhaps not coincidentally, the most anxiety-prone. “We’re
going to die,” he informed her, his leaves rustling so badly that it was
challenging to pluck out the words.
“The fighting won’t come
here,” Kiela said in the soothing voice she’d perfected after years of
working in such a sacred space. She added another book to the
pack-in-the-fifth-crate pile, then reconsidered and shifted it to the
pack-only-if-it-fits pile.
He shook his leaves at her. “The fighting is already here. They’ve battered down the front door and are ransacking Kinney Hall.”
“Goodness!”
The
door to Kinney Hall was a monstrosity built of brass and secured with
bolts made of the sturdy lumber used for the ribs of ship hulls. She
tried to calculate the amount of force required to batter down a
thirty-foot door, then blinked. “Ransacking, did you say?”
She’d expected the rebels to secure the library and its treasures—that was only sensible—but ransacking?
These were freedom fighters, not feral animals. She wasn’t even opposed
to their goals. On Caz’s recommendation, she’d read a few of their
pamphlets in the early days of the revolution, and the call for
elections and the sharing of knowledge seemed quite appealing …
“The North Reading Room is on fire,” Caz said. “They lit the tapestries first, and it spread to the scrolls.”
She felt sick. All those old manuscripts!
He tugged on her sleeve with a leaf. “Come on, Kiela, we have to leave.”
Leave? Now? But she hadn’t finished—
“If you make a leave-leaf joke,” Caz warned, “I’m going without you.”
She
got to her feet. The fifth crate was only half-filled. Kiela dumped an
armload of books into it without even checking what the titles were—“Enough, Kiela!”
Caz said as she went for a second armload—and then maneuvered it toward
the lift. On wheels, it scooted between the shelves, and she felt a
lurch in her stomach as they passed all the full shelves of beautiful,
wonderful books. She snagged a few more favorites as they hurried past.
Reaching
the lift, she shoved the wheeled crate inside and yanked down the gate.
Caz pushed the button with a leaf and turned the crank. The lift
lurched and then descended.
As they traveled between the floors,
Kiela heard the sound of metal clashing on metal, and her stomach
flopped. She didn’t know firsthand what a battle sounded like, but she did
know what a library was supposed to sound like, and all of this was
terribly, horribly wrong. Caz crept closer to her, and she wished the
lift would go faster.
What if it stopped on one of the floors with fighting?
What if it stopped altogether?
She
pushed the sublevel button again and again, as if that would encourage
it. The lift continued to inch downward with clanks and squeaks and
whirrs. The stench of smoke grew stronger. Looking out through the
grated gate, she saw haze shrouding the stacks.
“We should have taken the stairs,” Caz said.
“We’d have never been able to carry the books,” Kiela said.
“We
won’t save any books if we’re dead.” He shook so hard that several of
his leaves detached and floated to the floor. “Gah, I’m shedding!”
“You
need to think about something else,” she said. “Oak trees are struck by
lightning more often than any other tree. Apples can float because they
are twenty-five percent air. You can count the number of cricket chirps
per second to calculate the outside temperature.”
“Unless the outside is on fire,” Caz said. “How fast do they chirp if it’s all on fire?”
The
lift lurched as it reached the lowest level. Kiela yanked the gate open
while Caz maneuvered the crate with his tendrils. Shoving the crate
outside, they exited the elevator.
This far down, water-level,
she couldn’t hear the clang of metal or smell the stench of smoke. It
was overwhelmed by the ripe fish odor of the canal that flowed beneath
the library. All of the city of Alyssium was riddled with canals. It was
part of what made it one of the world’s most beautiful cities, the
jewel of the empire. Kiela remembered when she’d first arrived, very
young, before her parents died, and how impressed she’d been by the
sparkling canals, the lacelike white bridges, the spires, and the
flowers that blossomed on every balcony, draped from every window, and
framed every door. She wondered how much of the city she remembered was
left.
Hurrying through the narrow stone passageway with the
wheeled crate, she listened for any other movement. But all she heard
was the slosh of water against stone and the drip-drip-drip of a leak
somewhere nearby. Ahead were the boats.
Anchored in slips beneath
the library, the boats were used to transport books to and from select
patrons on nearby islands. Each had silver sails, tied tight around its
boom, and a black-cherry hull wide enough to transport multiple crates
of books but sleek enough to be sailed by a single librarian. She
herself had used one just last winter to deliver a full set of scholar
Cypavia’s Examinations of the Function of Forest Spirits in Fact and Fiction
to a bedridden emeritus sorcerer. He’d had his housekeeper offer her a
cup of tea as thanks, but she’d declined, wanting to hurry back to the
comfort of her stacks. At least those books are safe. That was only a slight consolation, though, compared to the wealth of knowledge in peril above her.
She’d
already filled her boat with the first four crates of books, secured
beneath a tarp. Maneuvering the half-filled fifth crate onto the boat,
she strapped it in. There was room for at least three more crates, but
there wasn’t time to fetch them. She wished she’d sorted books faster.
Or been less picky. She wished she’d packed more provisions. She’d
stowed a few jugs of water, as well as jars of preserved peaches, a bag
of dried beans, and a sack of pecans. For Caz, she had a tub of fresh
soil that he could replenish himself in, and she’d also hidden a couple
changes of clothes for herself, as well as a few blank notebooks just in
case. But she hadn’t emptied her cubicle in the library of her personal
items. She thought wistfully of all she’d left—her old journals, her
best quill set, a wooden carving in the shape of a mermaid that her
parents had given her when she was a child. But Caz was right: better to
save themselves. And the books.
We’ll come back when it’s safe, she thought. This is just temporary.
Climbing
into the boat, Kiela untied the line and pushed off. She pulled out the
pole for navigating the watery tunnels. The sails were wrapped up
around the boom. They’d stay down until they reached the open water.
She
wasn’t technically supposed to take the boat. Or the books. Or Caz. But
there had been no one left to ask, and she reassured herself that
they’d thank her later, when she returned. It wasn’t theft. It was her
job: taking care of the collection. I’m just … broadening the definition.
She poled through the tunnels until they flowed out into the open canals of the city.
“Well, this is absolutely horrible,” Caz said.
Kiela had to agree.
The
stars were blotted out by the smoke that rose from the bridges and
spires. The flames cast everything in a ghoulish light, and the sour
taste of the smoke coated the back of her throat. She felt it invading
her lungs with each breath. Her sky-blue skin looked sickly in the
unnatural light, and her dark blue hair soaked up the scent of smoke.
Down on the canals, Kiela and Caz were free from the worst of it, but
they weren’t free from the sights and sounds of death.
Later,
she’d block out most of that horrible night: the screams, the corpses in
the canals, the fear that choked her worse than the smoke. The trip
through the canals felt endless, and the sounds traveled across the
water even as they broke into the open sea.
With Caz’s help,
Kiela raised the silver sails once the water was too deep for the pole.
She’d learned how to sail as a small child and had delivered enough
books scattered over the years to stay in practice, so she thankfully
didn’t have to think to perform the tasks. Her hands remembered what to
do, how to catch the wind in the canvas, how to speed away, away, away.
Behind
them, the great city burned, with its people (both good and bad) and
its history (both good and bad) and its books and its flowers. And she
knew she wasn’t coming back.
* * *
As the sun rose
over the sea, all pink and yellow and hopeful, Kiela resolved to look
forward, not backward. There was no one in Alyssium who’d miss her—which
was a depressing thought in and of itself. Really, no one?
Absorbed
in her work, she hadn’t left the library for anything but the
occasional book delivery in … Had it been years? Yes, years. After she’d
finished school, she’d simply moved directly into a cubicle sandwiched
between the stacks. It had been simpler that way. She hadn’t had to
waste any time traveling to and from her work.
She had no family
in the city, and she’d lost track of her classmates—they’d drifted off
into their lives, and she’d fallen into the routine of hers. All her
meals were delivered, prepared fresh at any hour. Scholars often kept
odd hours, and therefore so did librarians. She merely had to send a
request down the chute, and everything would arrive via lift in a timely
manner. No interaction with anyone required. She’d considered it the
perfect system.
The other librarians … They had their own work on
other floors and in other wings. Kiela never liked to disturb anyone,
and she had gently—so gently that she hadn’t even realized she was doing
it—discouraged others from disturbing hers. As the sailboat bounced
over the waves, she realized she hadn’t even spoken to another soul
besides Caz in three weeks. The last person she’d talked to was a
janitor whom she’d shooed away for stirring up dust near some
particularly fragile manuscripts.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like
people. It was only that she liked books more. They didn’t fuss or judge
or mock or reject. They invited you in, fluffed up the pillows on the
couch, offered you tea and toast, and shared their hearts with no
expectation that you’d do anything more than absorb what they had to
give.
All of which was very lovely, but it left her in a bit of a
quandary: where to go, now that her old life had quite literally burned
down. “Caz…” she began.
“Mmm,” he said, muffled.
She
glanced across the boat to see he’d wedged himself between two of the
crates and had wound his leaves tight around his root ball. “Caz, what
are you doing?”
“Fish eat plants,” he said.
“Some fish,
yes.” She wasn’t overly familiar with the dietary preferences of fish.
She knew there were fish who liked kelp. She supposed they ate plankton
too. Also, insects? “Some fish eat other fish.”
“Who eat plants.”
“I suppose so.”
“Everything
eats plants,” Caz said. “But barely anything eats books. That’s why I’m
positioning myself between the crates. No one will think of looking for
a fresh, tasty morsel of green next to so many dead trees. So I am just
going to stay here, with the books, until we get to wherever we’re
going, which I hope won’t have fish, sheep, cows, or goats.” He
shuddered at the word “goats,” and Kiela wondered if he’d had a bad
experience with a goat or had just read about them. Most likely the latter. Livestock wasn’t permitted in the Great Library, for obvious reasons.
“That is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Kiela said. “We need a destination.”
“You … didn’t plan that out?”
“I
didn’t think we’d really have to leave,” she admitted. “Or I thought,
if we did, it would be just for a few hours or days. A week at most.”
She’d thought they could rent a slip in a harbor at one of the nearby
islands, perhaps Varsun or Iva, and stay for a couple days at one of the
charming inns where the lesser nobles liked to vacation.
Caz sagged, his leaves drooping as if they’d never tasted water. “So did I.”
They
sailed silently. It was a gloriously beautiful day for a sail. Light
breeze. Cheerful lemon light flashing on the water. Seagulls flew
overhead, cawing to one another. The many islands of the Crescent
Islands Empire—if it was an empire anymore, thanks to the
revolutionaries—looked peaceful from the distance, if you didn’t look
back to where smoke still stained the sky over the capital city. The
islands’ gray, white, and black cliffs were majestic, and the sweet
little fishing villages looked quaint, with their brightly painted
houses, cheerful gardens, and cobblestone streets. She and Caz could
sail into one of their harbors and then—do what? She couldn’t afford an
inn for more than a couple days. The coins that Kiela had brought with
her wouldn’t go far. Even if she could pay the harbor fees, she didn’t
relish living on the boat, day in and day out.
She resolved not to panic. She’d think as she sailed. And an answer would come to her.
Across
the water, she saw a herd of merhorses rise and fall with the waves.
Her breath caught in her throat. Half horse and half fish, they were a
magnificent sight. She watched, mesmerized, as they cantered through the
water. Their hooves crashed through the waves as their powerful fish
tails propelled them forward. Covered in jewellike scales and made of
solid muscle, they were the living embodiment of both beauty and
strength. Like the sea itself, Kiela thought. One of them tossed its mane, and droplets sprayed up and caught the light—a flash of rainbow.
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