A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

The voice was low, too low to be Leto’s, too human to be Andras’s, too serious to be Hero’s.

Claire spun. The collector stood very still a few steps from Claire, familiar enough to make her heart clench. The deep brown skin at her neck was smooth, showing no sign of the gunshot wound. Dark twists of hair curled neatly over a strong, composed face.

“What the hell—” Hero already had his pistol leveled, but Claire held a hand up. The collector’s eyes were deep and calm, and though Claire stared, she couldn’t quite bear to meet them. She studied her mouth instead. Her lips were parted on words Claire wasn’t sure she could stand to hear. But she had to.

“Talk,” Claire said.

The book collector’s shoulders dropped a little, as if she’d been expecting a warmer greeting. “During the last great war, there was a treaty, sealed with wards. This city has been warded against anything not of mortal make for years. It means you and your people are safe.”

Claire shook her head. “Hellhounds are too powerful to be stopped.”

The woman—woman, because even Claire couldn’t pretend she was just a character—shrugged, shoulders rolling in such a graceful, familiar way Claire found it hard to breathe. “They’ve tried before, but the wards have held for decades. No demons, no angels, no servants of any realm can breach it.”

The quaint little greeting that their guide had performed at the gates. It’d been a ritual. An invitation. Claire said, “You knew we were coming. You let us in.”

The woman nodded. “Anything restricted by the wards needs an invitation from a resident. When I realized what I had, I’d hoped… I set one of my people to watch for you.”

“And you are…” Andras waved his hand impatiently. “I’m gathering McAllister is not your true name.”

She hesitated, eyes straying to Claire. There was uncertainty in the gaze, and it hurt. It already hurt. There was no salvaging it. Claire jerked a nod, and the woman inclined her head to Andras, though it was not a warm look. “You can call me Beatrice.”

“How Shakespearean.” Hero lowered his gun slightly. “Now that imminent doom isn’t upon us all, explanations are in order.”

Claire scoffed. “We absolutely don’t have the time to—”

“Actually, if your character is telling the truth, we have a great deal of time. Which we will need, since she has yet to reveal the pages, and we have yet to figure out a way to deal with the Hounds.” When Claire turned, Andras had a narrow look for her, as if he were trying to make a particularly bothersome puzzle piece fit. “It is relevant to our interests.”

Claire’s gaze fell on Leto, who looked trapped between terror and confusion. And he was trapped. Caught in the mess that Claire had made of her own past. If nothing else, she owed it to him. She drew a small breath and faced the window again. Staring at the Hellhounds was the cowardly option, but she took it as she considered where to begin.

“I wasn’t even the librarian yet. Newly dead. It might have been… what, 1989? Only a few years working in the Library under Gregor, the former librarian. I loved the Library at first. Yes, I was distraught at the idea of being dead; Hell is an alarming thing to wake up to. But the Library itself was… magical. I loved books when I was alive. And the idea that they were preserved there was… beautiful. Beautiful, but lonely.”

The quiet pressed and prodded at her shoulders. It almost made Claire grateful for the howling Hellhounds. “Librarians have always been unwritten authors. And it’s natural for unwritten authors to be curious about their own books. It wasn’t hard to find them. At first, I spent my free time merely walking the stacks, staring hard at the spines with my name on them as I walked by. That progressed to touch. I knew better than to read them, but… I found any excuse to work in the shelves, moving books around them. I suppose it was the attention, the curiosity, that did it.”

“Your book woke up,” Hero supplied grimly.

“One of them, yes.”

A low sigh wisped behind her. “Oh, pup,” Andras said.

Claire flinched at the pity. Her shoulders had crept up with tension. But she had to barrel on. If she stopped, she’d never get through it. “Frightened the holy hell out of me one day while I was straightening the shelves. She was just…” Claire resolutely avoided looking at the unwritten woman in question. Resolutely avoided remembering how seeing her for the first time, there in the Library, so immediate and so familiar, so alive in a place of dead things… She did not remember how that felt. Did not remember the twist in her breath, the sharp thrill of wanting. Did not feel the old hurt. “I recognized her instantly. She was… part of me. One of the parts of me I would have written into a book, if I’d written one while I was alive.”

“You said this was in the Library, though. She escaped?” Leto asked.

“Not then. She didn’t need to, at first. I hid her.” Her voice had become quiet, clipped, as she tried to get through the tale with the fewest words possible. “The Library, by necessity, is infinitely vast and always changing. Even a tenured librarian can’t locate a single book without a calling card. That’s why we have the systems in place to avoid missing books. There were plenty of places to hide a hero.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t as big on rules back then as I am now.” Claire gave Leto a tight-lipped smile. “For what reason? Foolishness or loneliness? It doesn’t matter now.”

“It mattered to me,” Beatrice said, almost too soft to be heard. Claire’s throat tightened.

“In any case… librarians hold the reins of their libraries. Soon hiding wasn’t enough. I concocted a simple plan to get her out. I would get her past the wards, delay the alarms’ triggering. The idea was that I would go with Gregor to ‘assist’ hunting for her. Then I would slip away with her calling card. There would be the matter of outrunning the Hellhounds, but we would have a ghostlight for a head start and…”

“And no one would stop Claire when she put her mind to something.” Beatrice’s comment made Claire finally look at her, giving an unreadable shrug.

“Something obviously went wrong,” Hero said.

Claire hesitated, but Beatrice took over. She spoke haltingly, with a slight velvety accent. Her words weren’t measured or polished but had a steadfast certainty that felt like a lifeline. “We got caught. Librarian Gregor found out somehow—I suspect he knew the whole time. Never was certain. But he was waiting there for us the night I planned to leave. He had my calling card in his hands and… he intended to enslave me in that place. Stamp me to Special Collections.”

“Stamping. The monster,” Hero said with a look of mocking horror.

“Claire stopped him,” Beatrice said firmly, and a recoil of disgust shot through Claire.

“Stop. Just stop.” Claire found it difficult to press the words between clenched teeth. “At least do him the honor of telling it accurately. I murdered him.”

The pronouncement came out louder than she had intended and hung, suffocating, in the air. Claire didn’t care to see how it landed with anyone, the looks they were giving her. A cauldron of memories, hurts, fears, bubbled up in her chest, and it took a great effort to lower her voice. She dropped her eyes and said it again, testing the truth on her lips. “I murdered Gregor.”

Leto let out a wounded sound. “But that’s impossible. In the Library—”

“In the Library, there are… words, fail-safes,” Claire explained evenly. “Words taught only to librarians, for the defense of the Library. Words that will unravel a soul like the Hellhounds do—it doesn’t work on things native to Hell, of course, not on demons like Andras. But on human souls or creatures of other realms, it evicts them. Unmakes and banishes a soul, like waving away a puff of smoke. They don’t die, of course, but it can take decades, centuries, for a human soul to reassemble.