“We will get you new clothes and boots at the Glacier,” said Lirael.
“Oh, good,” said Nick. He hesitated, then added, “I seem to recall Sam said it was all women. I mean the Clayr were all women.”
“We . . . they are,” said Lirael. “Um, does that matter?”
“Clothes,” said Nick.
Lirael still looked puzzled.
“Men’s clothes,” said Nick. “Will I be able to get men’s clothes?”
“There are frequent male visitors,” said Lirael. “But . . . we don’t really wear different clothes, I mean a few underthings . . .”
She gestured around her chest. Nick nodded and looked away.
“I mean, breeches, a tunic, boots, they’re all the same, let out or taken in as required . . .”
“Oh, I see,” said Nick. “Stupid of me. Now, you wear armor and have a sword and those . . . those bells. I suppose you need them. All of it, I mean. Will I get a sword and armor, too? I can fence, reasonably well, fenced épée for the school all the way to the national championship, though I can’t say I’ve ever worn armor, real armor I mean. Will I need it? Armor and a sword?”
“I think at first you will need to rest and fully recover,” said Lirael carefully. She wasn’t entirely sure what the Clayr would make of Nick, but she knew it was important to discover what was going to happen with all the Free Magic contained inside him. “You will be quite safe within the Glacier. I mean as long as you stay out of the Library and places like that.”
“Oh, fierce librarians, then?” asked Nick, with a rather forced laugh. “Tell you to shush and that sort of thing?”
“Some of them are fierce,” agreed Lirael. She smiled. “Going into battle, at least. Though I’m not sure what ‘shush’ means.”
“To be . . . to be quiet,” said Nick. “That’s what librarians do, back home. I mean at school they did, the ones . . . the ones at the university are different.”
He did not mention that his knowledge of the university librarians was very limited, as, though he had been up at Sunbere for two terms, he had been following his own studies, had rarely attended a lecture and only looked into his own college library once, and had never even visited either of the university’s two major libraries. He had already been fully under the sway of Orannis then, the Destroyer directing his thoughts and plans.
“They tell you to be quiet?” asked Lirael. “Because you might attract the attention of something dangerous that has escaped the collection?”
“No, not exactly,” said Nick. “Er, your librarians go into battle?”
“When they must,” said Lirael. “The Library is very old, and deep, and contains many things that have been put away for good reason. Creatures, dangerous knowledge, artifacts made not wisely, but too well . . . books that should not be opened without proper preparation, some books that should never be opened at all.”
“Creatures?” asked Nick quietly. The few memories he’d managed to retain about his previous time in the Old Kingdom were often brief moments of seeing . . . hearing . . . smelling strange creatures, things come back from Death, and other monstrosities that his mind wished he had never seen. And the Hrule, of course, the creature in the case . . .
“Yes,” said Lirael. She was thinking of the Stilken, the creature she had found and inadvertently freed in the room of flowers in one of the Old Levels of the Library. She had been very lucky to survive that first encounter—and indeed, the second one—when she had dealt with that creature. Though not without considerable assistance from the Disreputable Dog, even though the hound would have claimed she didn’t do anything and wasn’t involved.
“I like libraries,” said Nick. He had loved the library at his prep school, but this love had turned sour at Somersby because of Mrs. Knipwich the librarian, who had been soured herself from dealing with several generations of irritating overprivileged schoolboys, and treated all of them as pests on a par with the cockroaches who ate the bookbinding glue. “Though not necessarily librarians—”
“I was a librarian,” interrupted Lirael stiffly. “A Second Assistant Librarian. Red waistcoat. I suppose I still am one. As well as being Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”
“I’m sorry,” said Nick. “I didn’t mean to offend. I liked the librarians at my first school. Just later, I mean Mrs. Knipwich was probably our librarian for too long, she got old and very cranky, a right horror . . .”
His voice trailed off as he realized he was talking nonsense, and worse, nonsense offensive to the librarian in front of him.
“I apologize,” he said.
“It is no matter what you think of librarians, or of me,” said Lirael. She hoped she’d managed to say it as if she didn’t care in the least, though in truth she was quite deeply wounded. Becoming a librarian had saved her life, in many ways, giving her an identity she had lacked when she was a Sightless Clayr. It hurt to hear Nick talk disdainfully about librarians, almost as if he were talking about her.
“Please, if you’re ready, get back in the paperwing. We still have a long way to fly and we must arrive before nightfall.”
“You don’t want any bread and cheese?” asked Nick, offering the pouch. “Or water? I filled up the bottle.”
“No, thank you,” said Lirael, though she was quite hungry. “I can eat as we fly; the paperwing knows the way.”
“Right . . .” said Nick dubiously. He glanced over at the eyes painted on the canoelike bow of the craft. The paperwing winked at him and he dropped the food bag, the bread and cheese tumbling out into the sand, instantly attracting a layer of grit to become inedible.
“Or not eat,” said Lirael shortly. “Please do get in. Do you need to be tied to your seat again? You don’t feel faint?”
“No, I’ll be fine,” said Nick. He felt quite cross now, both at himself and at Lirael. She seemed far more miffed about an innocent remark than was reasonable. How was he to know about her being a librarian and everything? And this constant harping on about him being weak and probably fainting, it was too
much. He climbed into the paperwing and settled into the hammock-like seat, noting that he too had a kind of long pocket on the left side to hold a sheathed sword, and a broad pocket on the right side for other odds and ends.
As Lirael put away her sword and climbed in front, Nick eyed the sandy ground ahead. There was only about twenty yards of island in front of them, and no aircraft he knew could possibly take off with a runway so short.
“How do we take off?” he asked, quite anxiously. “We’ll end up in the river, won’t we?”
“I do know how to fly,” said Lirael. “So does the paperwing, as I’ve said. All I have to do is whistle down the wind to lift us up.”
Chapter Fifteen
RETREAT FROM YELLOWSANDS
Yellowsands, Old Kingdom
There were eighty-nine villagers, all told, including twenty-three children too young to fight, even by Athask standards; they would give a five-year-old a knife if necessary. Ferin had counted the fisher-folk as they began to straggle away from the village, along the road that continued past the Charter Stone down the other side of the low hill and then carried on in a very straight line through a broad, empty valley that lay between a modest grassy hill to the southeast and a much higher line of grey shale hills to the northwest.
The valley road was perfect country for horse nomads, or in the current case wood-weirds that could run as fast as horses, Ferin noted unhappily, looking at the paved road and the bare ground either side. Now that her foot was so much better, she could manage a good pace herself, far faster than the villagers were actually going. The fisher-folk were so slow, even after those with barrows and push wagons and even chickens and ducks had been forced by the constable to set them aside or release them. Megril the constable was bringing up the rear now, a very identifiable figure—the only person in a mail hauberk with a shiny steel helmet and a sword at her side.