A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

Malphas set the dagger down by the nearest stack of books, losing interest. Instead she focused her full attention on Claire, which felt a queer mix of predatory and maternal. “About that. You have stolen from my army.”

It was a flicker of a moment, a trick of the light, when a shadow melted across Malphas’s features and turned them from wizened to skull-like, then back. Claire held the fear in her mouth rather than swallow and draw attention to her exposed throat. “As you said, I am too intelligent to cross you, Malphas.”

“Yet I smelled the burning from the hallway. Those Horrors and that wyrm were mine. Andras was mine, despite his reassignment. So it falls to me to name a new successor.” The train of thought behind Malphas’s granite eyes was impossible to guess. “There are several well-established demons campaigning for the honor—”

“No demons,” Claire said, more harshly than was wise. “I won’t share the Library with another grasping, plotting viper. There’s too much power in the Arcane Wing. The Arcanist needs to be someone who has no interest or ability to profit from it. Andras was proof enough of that.”

“As you said, you are intelligent,” Malphas mused. She leaned forward, patting Claire’s cheek with sharp fingertips that left cold grit there. Then the crone demon tapped her fingers at her wrinkled throat, making an obvious show of considering. “But if not a demon, then who? That knocks out a sizable portion of qualified candidates.”

Claire felt like she’d volunteered herself out onto a crumbling ledge and was now being asked to tap-dance. She traded a wary expression with Rami. The fallen angel gave a little nod, and she turned back to Malphas. “Rami would make an excellent curator.”

Malphas’s smile tilted over the edge from amused to disgusted. “A fallen angel is no better than a demon—worse, in fact, if he’s proven to have such pliable loyalties. What’s to keep him from making a play?”

“I have no interest in any game of yours, War Crone.” Rami still looked as if he was waiting for an ambush, the mouse under a cat’s paw, but he squared his shoulders. “In fact, I will only stay with the stipulation that I swear no oath to you or your throne. I believe that disqualifies me for any titles or honors in the court, does it not?”

“You are just as weak willed as ever,” Malphas hummed. “But an interesting pawn. You should lend him to me, Claire.”

The tremor that ran through Ramiel was palpable at Claire’s back. She smiled. “I’m short staffed as it is. I couldn’t possibly spare him.”

“Just as well. He needs a strong hand.” Malphas’s face fell into carefully crafted disappointment, maternal and knowing. “Either way, I’m not sure an angel has the credentials. What do you know about Lirene’s Eighth Circle Artifice Bond?”

Claire’s eyes flew to the untidy pile of artifacts she’d pilfered from the Arcane Wing, and her stomach dropped. She immediately knew where this was going even as Rami faltered. “I… I know danger when it must be contained.”

Malphas made a clicking noise with her tongue. “Oh, sweet, sweet Ramiel.” She studied her nails before turning her attention back to Claire. “He’s an angel with not an ounce of guile. The artifacts would eat him up on day one. We need someone with the acumen to deal with trickster artifacts. The strength to bring them to heel. Someone who has experienced the finer betrayals in life.”

Claire pursed her lips. “I said no demons, Malphas.”

“No demons. I had a different, reasonably intelligent mortal in mind.”

Malphas’s meaning was impossible to dodge, but Claire tried anyway. “I already have a position and responsibilities. I am Hell’s librarian.”

Then Malphas gave her a coin-flip smile, half-pitying and half-pleased, as she made Claire’s veins run cold with two words.

“Are you?”

The air stole out of her lungs and they ached. Claire refused to flinch from Malphas’s predatory stillness, but she ran her fingers idly over the paste brush still in her hands, tracing the wood against her calluses. When had she developed calluses? Bodies weren’t supposed to change in Hell. “Any soul sentenced to the Library remains until they’ve processed their sins.”

“Or failed in their duties.”

Claire clenched her jaw so hard it hurt. “I just repelled a hostile invasion of the Library.”

“By leaving a path of destruction through three realms and dead dreams in your wake. Even I was impressed, but death is my purview, not yours.” Malphas’s mood flipped. The jaws of the trap fell shut. “The librarian is supposed to protect the Library, not the other way around, child. How many books were lost because you went on this wild-goose chase? Leaving without permission on a stolen ghostlight alone would sentence any normal soul—”

“Oh, do save me the posturing.” Claire found herself on her feet, and Malphas raised a warning brow. “Lucifer knew what was happening. He had to. There were too many coincidences that had his tacit tolerance, if not approval. The codex pages. B—the collector and wards at Mdina. Deny it all you want—” She held up a hand, which only increased the murder in the old demon’s eyes. “But he kept you from the Library and sent no aid when we closed the wards. That alone says he knew and condoned what was going on. Hell broke faith with the Library first.”

Malphas waited until Claire reluctantly sat again before speaking, fond and soft, which was when she was most dangerous. “If— if —our lord had an inkling of Andras’s ambition, and if he decided to test Andras’s loyalty by dangling a morsel in front of him—”

“That sacrificial morsel being the pages of the codex, my Library, and my people.”

“ If he did as you say,” Malphas continued, “then he may have taken precautions to limit damage. And he must have had the faith—misplaced, in my opinion—that you would produce the necessary outcome. That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences for your actions, child of man. We have no control over that.”

The way she said it, with the calm of the ageless, made a final, awful piece snap into place in Claire’s brain. Her anger fell. “This isn’t coming from Lucifer at all.”

“No.” Malphas leaned back, crossing scarred, muscled arms. “When Hell comes for you, little mortal, you’ll know it.”

Claire tried to ignore that. “The books… have a grievance?”

Malphas cast a look around the ash-strewn hall. “Wouldn’t you?”

The Library had always been not quite quiet. Silence was always built on the susurrus of rustling pages, the creak of leather spines, the rumbles of stories sleeping fitfully. There was none of that now. The books slept, but dreamlessly. It turned the Library into a tomb, and again the dust of a thousand books turned to graves clogged Claire’s chest. “And the Library chooses its librarian,” Claire said dully. “But in the stacks, they—it, the Library—withdrew. It gave me a chance to make things right.”

“And that’s what you’ll do, as Arcanist,” Malphas said. “The Arcane Wing will no longer be a threat.”

Claire knew it wasn’t wise to look away from Malphas, but she found her gaze had drifted to the cluttered desk in front of her. The new stitches on Hero’s book had tightened. Claire picked up scissors and began mechanically snipping off the loose ends. She had cleaned up only two knots when Malphas broke out with a terrifying sound: laughter.

“Despair is such a dull look on you. Don’t start boring me now.” Malphas leaned over the desk, looking every inch the dotty, harmless old woman she pretended to be. “You’ll still work in the Library, of course. There’s plenty of work to do to clean up your mess. As you said, the Arcane Wing and the Unwritten Wing are the allies that make the Library. I never had much patience for reading, but it gives Hell an air of erudite respectability.”