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But you’d never know she was a ghost—that was the thing. Unless Minya started in, but Minya was sleeping now, and so Feral assumed Sarai and Lazlo weren’t. Maybe they were getting lucky lucky right at this very moment. Feral grimaced and performed a dramatic flop from his right shoulder over onto his left, only to give an unmanly gasp and skitter backward at the sight of a figure beside his bed.

Ruby.

“What do you want?” he asked surly.

“What do you think I want? Scoot over.”

And poor Feral still didn’t know. She slid under his sheet (he’d had to drum one up, pillows too; it was scratchy, they were lumpy; he disliked them) and she turned her back and lay still, waiting.

For what?

Did she want... that? Now? He considered his options and snaked out a hand in hesitant reconnaissance.

Ruby made that sound like disgusted gargling that you make in the back of your throat when someone’s totally hopeless (so, no, apparently she didn’t want that) and, grabbing his hand, she pulled it hard so that his whole body came up against hers in...oh. A cuddle. The spoon kind. She tucked his hand under her breasts, and that was all. She fell asleep. He didn’t, not for a long time. The warmth of the back of her and all its curves was pressed against him as he lay awake wondering: Bless Thakra, by all that’s holy—and very, very unholy—what does this mean?

Chapter 21

From a Long Line of Indignant Nostrils

Books.

Corridors lined with books.

Thyon and Calixte had indeed uncovered the remains of the ancient library of Weep...or, rather, of the ancient library of whatever the city had been called before the goddess of oblivion ate its name and left “Weep” in its place in a spectacular act of deathbed vengeance.

There were cave-ins blocking some of the passages, and skeletons that could only be librarians trapped when the anchor came down. “Wisdom keepers.” Thyon remembered that that was what they’d been called. Once upon a time, there would have been some manner of grand edifice above, but it had been pulverized. These were the stacks, the underground levels, and they didn’t extend very deep, because the city was built over a network of branching waterways. Still, there were a lot of books. When they’d gotten the door open, Thyon had wandered in a daze, trailing his fingers over dusty spines and wondering what lost knowledge was here.

That was hours ago. The world had turned away from the sun. Day had darkened to night. The last of the noise of the exodus had faded along the eastward road, and a weird silence had taken over the city. The moon drifted overhead, peering down into the sinkhole as though curious what they were up to with their ropes and baskets, their midnight labors.

Thyon’s neck was sore. He went to rub it, and no sooner touched it than he winced. The sweat from his neck got into the open blisters on his palm and stung like the devil. Sweat and blisters! If his father could see him now, toiling like a common laborer, he would burst half the blood vessels in his face from pure outrage. It was almost enough to make Thyon smile. But there was nothing common about this labor. He blew on his palm. It helped a little.

At his side, the Tizerkane warrior Ruza was giving him a considering look, but he averted his gaze as soon as Thyon turned, and pretended he hadn’t been watching him.

“Are you two done standing around up there?” called Calixte—in Common Tongue for Thyon’s benefit. She was down in the sinkhole with Tzara, the pair of them framed in the unearthed doorway.

“Just getting started,” Ruza called back, though in his own language. “Do I need to apply for an idleness permit? Are you granting those tonight?”

Calixte pitched a rock at him. It was a solid throw, and would have connected with his head had his hand not shot out and caught it. “Ow,” he said, resentful, shaking out the hand. “You could just say, ‘Permit denied.’”

“Permit denied,” she said. “Keep hauling.”

Thyon only understood a smattering of words, but detected dry humor in their tones and expressions. It was beginning to grate on him, not being able to understand them. It was like handing someone the ability to mock you right to your face while you just stood there like a fool. Maybe he should have made an effort. Might he not have learned and not let them know it, so at least he could tell what they were saying about him? If Strange and Calixte had managed to learn, then certainly he could have, too.

Of course, they both had something he didn’t: friends to teach them. Calixte had Tzara, more than a friend. And as for Strange, he had practically become one of them, working right alongside them, not just keeping accounts as the Godslayer’s secretary, but hammering stakes and scrubbing out pots, and even learning to throw a spear, all while trading jests in their thrilling, musical language.

Most of the jests had come from this warrior, Ruza, the youngest of the Tizerkane. “Pull,” he said to Thyon now, a single curt syllable in Common Tongue, with none of his sly tone or merriment.

Thyon bristled. He did not take orders. His jaw muscles clenched. His palms stung, his shoulders ached, and he was tired. He felt like a frayed rope that could snap at any moment, but then, he’d felt like that for years and he hadn’t snapped yet. The few remaining fibers holding him together were apparently made of strong stuff. And besides, he reasoned, Ruza’s Common Tongue was rudimentary; perhaps niceties were lost on him. So he bent at the warrior’s side, took hold of his share of rope, clenched his teeth around the pain that immediately screamed from his raw palms, and did as he was bid. Hand over hand, he pulled.

And up from the sinkhole, on the pulley line they’d rigged from the doorway, another basket loaded with books rose slowly into sight.

“Why are books so heavy?” groaned Ruza as it reached the top, and they swung it onto solid ground.

Thyon’s mind produced explanations that had to do with the density of paper, but he offered up only a grunt. He had a new appreciation himself for the weight of books. He was accustomed to a small army of librarians carting them around for him. Truth be told, he was accustomed to servants doing everything for him. In his neck, a nerve pinched. He rolled his head from side to side, grimaced, and bent to examine the contents of the basket.

What a treasure trove he and Calixte had uncovered. At least, the books looked like treasure. He had no way to judge their contents.

Alongside Ruza, he started lifting them out of the basket and stacking them in crates in the cart they’d backed up to the sinkhole. There was a donkey in harness, drowsily waiting to make the return journey to the Merchants’ Guildhall. For hours they’d been trudging back and forth, stacking the books in the halls, in the dining room, anywhere there was space, just to get them away from here, lest the sinkhole give way and spill what remained of the city’s lost knowledge into the roiling Uzumark. Thyon and Calixte had gone to Eril-Fane as soon as they realized what they’d discovered. They’d found him looking haggard and sorrowful, and their news had brought him a tired smile.

The Tizerkane had been involved in defensive preparations, but he had lent them Ruza and Tzara to aid in their salvage efforts. Thyon had hardly expected to work all night long, but no one had suggested stopping, so he couldn’t, either, without having to imagine the meaning of the words they’d call him under their breath. They’d eaten bread and cheese a while ago, and drunk gulps from a bottle of something potent that had burned the edges off his fatigue— and perhaps the surface layer off his throat as well, not that he was complaining.

Thyon had thought that, as a scholar, he should be down in the library, selecting which books to save, but it had been pointed out— correctly, if not politely—that he couldn’t read them, and was thus useless, except as a pair of arms to haul them.

Demoted to laborer. Imagine.

At least he could examine them as he unloaded them. Carefully he lifted out a tome. It was a marvel: soft white leather leafed liberally in gold. There was a moon etched on the spine. He couldn’t help himself. “What does this say?” he asked Ruza, holding it out for him to see.

The warrior took it. He was shorter than Thyon and more heavily made—thick-shouldered, with big, square hands that made the alchemist’s look fragile—like the porcelain hands in jewelers’ shops that were used for displaying rings. “This?” Ruza squinted, tracing the gold letters with a broad fingertip, and, Thyon noted, leaving a smudge. He gritted his teeth and refrained from snatching the volume back. “It says,” the warrior told him, “ ‘Greatest Mysteries of Alchemy Revealed.’ ”

Thyon’s hearts gave a lurch. “Really?” he asked. The alchemists of Weep had been paragons of the ancient world, and all their secrets were lost.

He could learn the language. He could read all these books. A great hunger and excitement filled him. He could stay here to study. He didn’t have to go home.

Zosma. The thought of his city, of his empty pink palace, even of his laboratory, they conjured no feeling of “home.” He didn’t miss any of it, and not any person, either. The realization made him feel adrift, like one of the ulola flowers borne on a gust of wind.

It also made him feel the smallest bit...free.

“Mm.” Ruza nodded. “But oh, what’s this? Down here it says—” And, pointing at the subtitle that Thyon could see was only three words long, purported to read out, “‘A practical handbook for making the rich richer and granting eternal life to greedy monarchs so that they can rule poorly forever’?” With confusion painted on his face, he looked up at Thyon, and asked, pretending to be an imbecile, “Is that what alchemy does?”

Thyon’s excitement curdled. He bent back to the basket to hide the flush that spread up his neck. He hated being mocked. It brought up his father’s voice, so elegant and vicious. “If you don’t know how to read,” he retorted stiffly, “just say so.”

“Funny,” said Ruza, unperturbed. “Seems like you’re the one who can’t read. Oh. Look.” He picked up another book. “This one’s called ‘Manners for Faranji: How Not to Act Like a Supercilious Gulik to Your Barbarian Hosts.’ Did they not have this one back in your library?”


Tags: Laini Taylor Strange the Dreamer Fantasy