A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

He was climbing to the scales, Rami realized. He knew what scales in an afterlife meant. He could read a realm as well as Claire. The boy was submitting his soul for judgment. Rami had seen enough war, enough strife, to know the shoulders of defeated men. The exact line of the down-turned head of someone who knew his fate and had given up fighting it. The boy knew what the scales would find in his soul.

The librarian was not the only one who understood costs, it seemed.

“What are you…” Rami must have betrayed something with his face, because Claire followed his gaze over her shoulder.

The teenager had one arm bent against his stomach but held out his other in supplication. The crocodile spirit brought the scales closer. The boy placed his feet carefully on the reptilian lips and left the shore.

Claire made a sound as if she’d been struck, then breathed a word. “Don’t…”

Claire pelted down the beach, but the swordsman took three wide steps to intercept her, whipping his arms around her waist. She was practically lifted off her feet as she scrambled at the man holding her back.

“Stop! Don’t do this!” Claire’s voice was jagged, more shattered than Rami had ever heard it. The swordsman bent his head and muttered into her ear soft words that were entirely unheard.

The teenager paused, one hand on the scales, as he looked behind. From the distance, Rami couldn’t make out his precise expression, but the boy raised a calm hand.

And then he stepped on the scale.

An inhuman howl, half fear, half fury, welled up from the librarian as the scales started to dip. She twisted and dragged them both to the sand as the crocodile god’s jaws started to close. The boy held tight to the bronze chains of the scale and seemed to shiver as the shadows of the crocodile’s jaw passed over him. Darkness wrapped over his face. The bronze scale glimmered once, twice.

Then the scales and the boy were gone.

In the silent moment that drew out, as the crocodile god closed its mouth and sank its head back beneath the muddy waters, Rami realized his mouth had dropped open. His chest had gone cold.

A thin keen carried over the sand, and Claire collapsed in a mess of skirts and braids, shoulders trembling. The swordsman kept a tight grip on her shoulders as he crouched next to her, as if afraid to let her go lest she attack the crocodile god itself. He made awkward attempts to pat Claire’s shoulders, then resorted to drawing her forcibly to her feet.

Rami saw why. The crocodile had reoriented upon resurfacing. The boy’s soul must have satisfied, for now the great creature surfaced with its closed snout touching the shore. Its body extended, just breaking the surface, until it bridged the entire width of the waters and its impossibly long tail rested on the far shore.

The swordsman tried to guide Claire toward it, but the librarian broke free of his grasp with an explosive jerk. She strode back to the arch with a furious speed.

Her usual clay complexion was pale, her eyes red from unshed tears. Her cheeks were stubbornly dry, but the grief and the fury that limned her face gave it a fire all its own.

Rami clenched the pommel of the sword at his side, half expecting her to burst through the gate and launch herself at him.

But Claire stopped just short of the gate, chest heaving. “You did this.” Her words were rough as gravel from crying. “He was innocent, and he died because of you. And for that… for that , Watcher, I will remember you. And one day I will bring all of Hell upon you.”

The swordsman caught up to her and hesitated at her back. Claire didn’t wait for a reply. She twisted past her companion and stumbled, taking her broken warpath toward the crocodile bridge.

DURING A PANIC ATTACK, time takes on a liquid nature. Stopping and rushing on at once. Feeling like each struggling breath stretches out forever like taffy until the bubble bursts and the present cascades down on your head. Cold and immediate.

Brevity was surrounded by the soothing smells of oak and dust when she came to. A carpet twitched under her toes and the dribbles of tea stains eventually helped her place the underside of Claire’s desk. Big, heavy, secure. There were worse places to hide forever.

“She’s dead.”

“She’s not dead. She’s a muse; they’re immortal.”

“Maybe it’s a short flavor o’ immortality, eh? It’s her name, innit?”

“Hush, Libby. Aurora said…”

Three pairs of feet clustered at the opening of the desk, none of them seeming to go together. Combat boots, scuffed buckle shoes, and one pair of dainty blue hooves. Brevity buried her face in her hands and swallowed a groan.

“See! She’s alive!” A mop of red curls upended itself over the edge of the desk, and a damsel gave her an upside-down grin. “Welcome back!”

God, was that what she was like when Claire complained she was inappropriately cheerful? Brevity might have contemplated hiding, but the bubble had already burst and time pulled her forward again. She allowed the trio to drag her to her feet. Conversation was a shock of water to her senses, not clearing the panic, but compressing it. Freezing it up into a tiny bundle that caught between her ribs and held, for now. Brevity reached for the first words she could think of that sounded vaguely librarian-ish. “Wh-what are you doing out of the suite?”

“We were going to complain about the noise. It’s been going on for hours,” the red-haired damsel said. Charlotte, Brevity remembered, taking in the patched dress and scuffed buckle shoes. Probably from one of those puritan moral historicals, where girls were more symbols of… something… than characters. Purity. Sin. Life. Death. Puritans never did seem to make up their minds about it. Aurora, blue hooves toeing the carpet nervously, hung over her shoulder.

“What noi—”

The question answered itself in a creaking shudder. The Library trembled. The lights flickered, though there was no reason for them to—perhaps just to express the Library’s displeasure with the situation at hand. Books twitched uneasily in their stacks, and the damsels looked wide-eyed at Brevity.

Helplessness, sharp and familiar, welled up again, but Brevity had an audience this time. Audiences helped. Brevity put on her best smile and pretended to find something on Claire’s desk that urgently needed straightening. “The wards are up—just… just a precaution until Miss Claire gets back.” Her smile was guttered by another violent thunderclap that hung in the air. “That there is probably just annoying ol’ demon roughhousing. You remember Valentine’s? Ain’t nothing compared to that.”

“If the wards are up, doesn’t that mean we’re cut off—”

“S’not like we’re gonna get written anyway,” the second damsel interrupted. This damsel was short and angry, like a wet cat wrestled into a leather jacket. Her once-long blond hair had been haphazardly shaved, perfect ingenue features pinched into a frown. “Our authors been dead for decades.”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Brevity jumped in before Charlotte could be hurt by that remark. “Just librarian business. M-Miss Claire will be back any minute, and wouldn’t want to have her catch ya outside the suite, yeah?”