Chapter Seventeen Simran
Chapter Seventeen
Simran
The hunt is sacred to the Eternal Queen. When the solstice comes, let all wyrms and wyverns, beasts and chimeras, flee into the darkest reaches of the forest. Let the hounds howl and the goodly knights take up their arms. The Queen will find the enemies of her Isle and skewer them through.
Source: Parliamentary speech by Rt. Hon. Harold Harper
Archivist’s Ruling: Preserve. Publication permitted. No further action required.
Cora led them farther into the dark with Vaughan at her side. She wrapped her arm around him. He made an embarrassed noise but didn’t shrug her off. The relief both of them felt was obvious. They were a family, and they were whole again.
Looking at them made her think of Hari. Not that she ever really stopped thinking of Hari.
If there weren’t answers here, she didn’t know what she’d do.
No, she did. She’d stop playing the pale assassin’s game. She’d go to the Copper Mountains and rip him apart.
Simran looked away from Cora and Vaughan and tried to look for the green library instead. But there was nothing—only mist thickening into smoke, leeching the color from everything and everyone. Simran’s own hands, when she glanced down, looked gray, her boots black on the blacker soil.
She looked up and saw a gray cliff ahead of them, opening into a narrow chasm. The chasm appeared so suddenly, it made her pause.
“In here,” Cora urged, and she and Vaughan stepped into the chasm confidently. The mist swallowed them.
She and Vina followed. Simran sucked in an immediate breath. In the chasm, color reappeared, green and lush all around them. The chasm was covered in ferns, the walls of rock on either side glowing and feathered with emerald light.
Vina looked just as awed. She raised her head, all the color spilling jewel-like over her gold-brown face. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured.
Yes, Simran thought, looking at the light on her, the curls at her ears. She turned away.
They walked for a long time, the ferns a susurration of greeting around them in a faint forest breeze. Finally, Cora and Vaughan stopped.
A winding circle of stones lay on the ground before them, looping in on itself in a crude spiral. The path ahead was cloaked in mist.
Cora kneeled down and knocked a hand thrice against the earth.
“I come seeking knowledge,” Cora called out. Her voice echoed back on them in dozens of whispery echoes. “I come seeking truth. May I drink of knowledge? May I enter?”
Ritual words. They waited, together, for the ritual answer.
The ground shuddered—groaned, like an old beast. Then ahead of them stood a door. The chasm ended, suddenly, with its ancient oak surface, pitted with moss, and the knocker of dulled brass. Vaughan pressed his hands to the door and laboriously pushed it open.
Stairs met them, made of dark stone, covered in moss, surrounded by sloping walls. Cora and Vaughan walked in. Vina and Simran looked at each other. Then Simran stepped forward, and Vina followed.
They entered a circular room, its floors stone, its walls the pitted sap-sweet wood of living trees.
Six figures awaited them, dressed in plain robes as if they were archivists—but they were not, Simran was sure of that.
She knew cunning folk when she saw them, and at least three of these were cunning folk indeed—clear-eyed, glowing with benevolent magic, limni ink written in their skin.
They all wore chatelaines, the tools of an archivist’s trade at their waists—quills, scissors, ribbon.
These were the librarians of the green library.
One of them had their arms open, eyes teary.
“My apprentices!” they cried, striding over to grasp Cora and Vaughan both into an awkward embrace. “Where have you been? Vaughan, why do you have antlers?”
Vaughan was stammering out an explanation, but Cora cut in calmly.
“We’ll speak later, Roslin,” said Cora. “We have petitioners for you. They came with a compass—and they saved Vaughan and me from danger.”
Simran immediately drew out her broken compass again, presenting it. The eyes of the librarians turned on her.
“Who sent you here?” Roslin asked. “And for what purpose?”
“We were sent by cunning folk in London,” said Simran. “Lydia Chen and her circle. An Elsewhere girl was murdered in Limehouse—an incarnate from a tale none of us have seen before and can’t name. She was killed by the pale assassin, and I must find him. I need your help.”
“So you come here to learn to kill?” another librarian murmured, eyes narrowed with displeasure. “An easy enough task. Your companion has a sword—bid her to use it.”
“He can’t be killed. I shot him and he lived—healed, immediately. I’d like to kill him,” she said bluntly. “But more than his death, I need answers. He kidnapped my friend. If I cannot tell him his name and why he cannot die, then my friend’s life is forfeit.”
Roslin clicked their tongue. “An old bargaining tale,” they said, thoughtful.
“Please,” said Simran. “The pale assassin is dangerous. He’s killed many incarnates. If he isn’t stopped, we fear the Isle may perish.”
The librarians exchanged looks.
“If cunning folk have sent you to us, then you have the right of entry. That is the old bargain we hold to with their kind,” one said reluctantly. “But the Beast will decide if you are worthy.” From the corner of her eye, Simran saw Vina raise an eyebrow.
Roslin said, “Cora, if you’re willing…”
“I’ll show them the way,” said Cora. She inclined her head to the other librarians, then untangled herself from Vaughan and walked across the room to another brass-limned door. “Follow me,” she said.
They were led down a bark-lined corridor that seemed to stretch endlessly in front of them. A wind crept down it, whistling hollowly. Simran felt the urge to hesitate, and forced herself not to. She was a witch; no magic had the right to concern her. She should have been comfortable here.
“This place seems… large,” Vina murmured, her voice reflecting the awe Simran felt but didn’t want to express.
“It has to be,” said Vaughan. “All the stories and tales the archivists reject, all the ones that threaten the ‘correct order’—we collect and save those. In some ways we’re more an archive than the royal archives are.”
“We’re two sides of the same coin,” said Cora.
“We’re called to it, archivist and librarian alike—protecting stories, preserving them, keeping them safe in their books.
But the archivists want to control stories—destroy the ones that don’t suit them, and shape the others the way they like.
They only care about bloody propaganda. We save everything. We save what they try to kill.”
The rooms they moved past had wooden shelves crammed with books.
There were labels on the shelves—some in gilt, some scrawled in black ink that had dyed the wood blue.
The interior of the library wasn’t damp like the outside, which seemed sensible, but also suggested some kind of magic was at work.
When Simran breathed in she smelled dry air, dusty books, sweet ink.
It was like ash to her. She forced her feet to keep moving.
There was an impatient knot in her chest. She needed to save Hari. That was all that mattered.
It was Vina who lingered, peering into one room.
Simran paused, waiting for her. There was wonder in Vina’s eyes—a slight parting to her mouth that made Simran think of how Vina had looked, before they’d kissed, all soft expectation.
Any desire to snap at Vina died before it reached her own lips.
When Vina realized Simran and the others were waiting, she gave a sheepish smile.
“Terribly sorry,” she said. “Let’s keep moving. ”
“We can take our time,” Vaughan said earnestly, but Cora was already striding industriously ahead of them.
Simran walked by Vina’s side, through gray stone corridors, lit by lamps with pale flames that flickered under covers of glass.
“You like libraries?” Simran asked.
“I like books,” said Vina. “I grew up surrounded by them. My father was never much of a reader, but my stepmother—she was a writer. Archivist approved, of course. They read all her drafts long before publication. She liked to read with me. At least when I was little. She had some beautiful tomes. When I visit my father’s home I still like to look at them.
” Another smile, quick; a carefully, swiftly placed mask.
My father’s home, Simran noted. Not mine. Not Vina’s own. She had a sense of what Vina’s childhood had been like, and she didn’t care for it at all.
Her own childhood, at least, would have been decent—if Simran hadn’t been herself. That was her own fault, and no one else’s. Her parents had loved her, and loved her still.
She pushed her guilt away.
Whispers touched her ears again. They became sharper, clearer. This time it was Simran who stopped. She couldn’t help herself.
The room they were walking by now had no books within it.
Instead the room was filled with misty shadows that flitted back and forth, carrying whispers with them.
Entranced, Simran stared as the shadows drew together, forming little animals—sparrows and goshawks, loping hares, and scurrying dormice; foxes with smiling maws, pointed ears.
They made flowers—little daisies and snowdrops that bloomed in a carpet of shadow, then flickered away.
She heard whispers sing together: a woman’s creaking voice, a child’s babbling laughter; and other voices, words she couldn’t understand, and words she shouldn’t have, but could.
“What does this room hold?” Simran asked. She sounded as breathless and awed as she felt.
It was Vaughan who replied.
“A room of stories,” he said. “Just, not ones that are in books. Stories that were never written down.”
“It’s called oral storytelling, Vaughan,” said Cora.
“You can store that?” Vina said. “I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”