Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

Slowhand did. "So we need to sort this out, right? So where are we off? The Prison of Pain? Ranson's Remains? The Mound of Thunder?"

"Actually," Kali responded, "to the library."

"The library?" Slowhand repeated, not sure that he had heard right.

"We need to do some research."

"The library," Slowhand said again, deflated. "You know, one thing about working with this woman is there's never a dull moment."

The Hall of Proscribed Knowledge, the largest of the collections in the Final Faith library, was situated in a wing of the cathedral all of its own. The vast depository was packed with shelves towering as high as the ornate architraves and each shelf, in turn, was crammed to bursting with tomes of all shapes, sizes and provenance, the evident age and titles of many of which almost made Kali drool. The ones set in elven or dwarven script, particularly.

The books on the lower shelves were reached through a claustrophobic and labyrinthine network of narrow passageways which jinked left and right unexpectedly and along which two people could not walk abreast. These, however, were the more common tomes, and the loftier ones — literally and metaphorically — were accessed by a precarious and dizzying network of crooked and seemingly unlinked metal stairways that reminded Kali of a structure she'd struggled for weeks to scale in a recurring dream. As she had in the dream, she wondered quite how it was they managed to stay up. She doubted magic, because from the moment she and Slowhand had entered she'd sensed the library was somehow isolated from the rest of the cathedral, and whatever sorceries or technologies were in use elsewhere in the complex had no place here, lest they damage the tomes. There was probably even — under normal circumstances — a dampening field in place. The contents of at least some of these books also explained why so few people were present: a cardinal here, an eminence there, and white-gowned curators whom she presumed had been thoroughly vetted before being trusted with the information in their charge. This was a domain accessible only to the Faith elite, though Kali struggled to reconcile them with the term as over the sounds of scribbling and dry parchment pages being turned, there was the occasional consumptive cough, belch and blatantly delivered fart.

"As I said," Killiam Slowhand muttered, "never a dull moment."

" Shhh!" A voice admonished.

Slowhand stared at the white-gowned curator, a wizened little man about half the height of Suresight, who was as dusty as the shelves.

"Hey, I can mutter, can't I?"

" Shhh!"

Slowhand shook his head and pulled Kali aside. "I don't get it," he whispered. "Why here? Surely whatever we can find here, the Filth already know?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Kali whispered back. "I'm willing to bet there are thousands of books here that have been confiscated simply because they could be confiscated, and haven't been touched since. Hopefully we'll find something they haven't."

The archer looked dubious.

"Come on, Slowhand, how many people do you know who've read the entire contents of their own library?"

"You, for one."

"Yes, well…"

"And Merrit Moon," Slowhand said. "Well, all apart from — "

"The Flesh Rituals of Elven Slither Maidens? With pictures by P'Tang?"

"Oh, yeeeah." Slowhand looked at her suspiciously. "How did you know?"

"Because I was reading in the corner when you crept down and nicked it from his shelf."

" Borrowed ."

"A year ago. Frankly, I'd be amazed if you can still open the thing."

Slowhand coughed and abruptly paled. He hissed, "Wait a minute. You're not seriously suggesting we work our way through this entire place!"

" Shhh!"

"Will you fark off!"

"There is no need for — "

"Hey!" Slowhand shouted. He unslung Suresight from his back and mimed using the little man as an arrow and shooting him out a window. The curator scuttled off.

"Not if you know what you're looking for," Kali went on. She hopped up steps and plucked a pile of tomes, dropping them on Slowhand for him to read. "But it is going to be a long night."

Kali browsed more shelves for tomes for herself, and then she and Slowhand made their way to a reading table. Kali rolled her eyes as she flung her backpack onto the table. The bag clattered and there was a long sigh from beyond the wall of books.

They hadn't been working long when a shadow loomed over them.

"Need any help?" A voice asked and Slowhand looked up. Then he looked down, then up again, before stretching back in his chair, hands linked behind his head, beaming.

"Be our guest," he said, showing all his teeth.

Kali, too, looked Gabriella DeZantez up and down. The woman had washed off the dust of the trail and changed into a clean white surplice, its brilliance accentuating the subtle but powerful musculature beneath her bronzed skin. Kali pouted inwardly — she spent far too much time underground to get a tan like that. "You don't strike me as someone who has spent a lot of time with her head in a book," she responded, after a moment.

Gabriella smiled coldly. "You disappoint me, Kali. I'd have expected you of all people not to judge a book by its cover."

"Oh?"

"A girl from a backwater tavern with an over fondness for drink, an absolute disregard for authority and a tendency to repeatedly cross swords with the Final Faith? Hardly the kind of person you'd expect them to turn to for help."

"What can I say? We go back a ways."

Gabriella nodded. "I know, I've done some research of my own. The Clockwork King. The Crucible. Greenfinger's Wood. The Faith holds quite a file on you."

"You surprise me. That crack about 'sex occasionally' still in there?"

"The Anointed Lord's small attempt at a joke. She's human, too, you know, despite her calling from the Lord of All."

"Yeah, right," Kali spat. Then she apologized. What DeZantez had shown her earlier had proven that there was at least some basis to the Faith's beliefs, even if she remained convinced that their interpretation of it was deeply suspect.

"For the record," DeZantez went on, "I spent a good deal of my childhood in a place such as this. Not on the same scale, of course. My mother ran — still runs — the Faith archive in Andon."

Kali raised her eyebrows. "Marta DeZantez is your mother?"

"You know her?"

"Not well, but I've had… occasion to consult her records. She's a good woman — non-partisan."

For the first time DeZantez's smile warmed, and she nodded her acknowledgement, still a little uneasy.

"Listen," Killiam Slowhand said loudly, in an attempt to defuse the situation. "Seeing as we are all in the employ of the Fil — the Faith for the foreseeable future, what say we all be friends here?" The archer patted an adjacent chair. "Sit by me."

DeZantez stared at the proffered chair and then the archer, regarding him as she might a mollusc. "So you can pretend to read a book while you ogle my thighs? I don't think so."

"I guess she's read your file, too," Kali said.

"Uh-huh," DeZantez confirmed.

Slowhand did his best to look innocent, then attempted to change the subject. "Gabriella DeZantez," he said, with his best grin. "Quite the mouthful. How about I call you Dez?"

The swordswoman's eyes darkened. "Sure. How about I call you Slow?"

The archer's smile faded and it was Kali's turn to smile. She indicated a seat beside herself instead. "There's a lot to get through. We'd welcome your help."

Gabriella slid into the proffered seat. "Okay. What are we looking for?"

"Two things. Anything about the machines, their origin and history, but particularly any mention of how they are activated and controlled. Secondly, dates and details relating to the legend of the Pale Lord, known experiments and movements, anything that might cross-reference with the Engines or this 'pillar of souls.'"