Chapter 25
The sign hanging from the handle of Thistleburr’s red door read CLOSED. Viv couldn’t remember ever seeing it before. She tried to peer through the glare on the windows, but the curtains were drawn. She knocked and called out, “Fern? Are you in there?”
Potroast’s answering bark came first. The curtains twitched aside, and then Viv heard the latch being thrown. The door opened inward, and Fern appeared in the gap, clad in a filthy smock, her fur haloed in dust.
“What in the—” began Viv, but Fern ushered her in with an impatient paw.
The shop looked like the victim of a very localized, very selective earthquake.
Most of the shelves were bare, although a few lonely volumes still leaned against one another on some of them, like drunks past midnight. The rest tottered in stacks and small mountains everywhere else.
Satchel stood amongst the wreckage, a tuft of fluff clinging to one horn, the flames of his eyes swirling blue. He clutched a large sheet of brown paper, torn along one edge. A spool of twine sat tilted in his pelvis, the location of which made Viv strangely uncomfortable.
Potroast trotted anxiously between the stacks, sniffing and whimpering, and spared Viv a distracted hoot of indignation.
From a small pile near the door, Fern seized a book-sized parcel wrapped in twine. Scrawled across the front in dark ink were the words TRAVEL, ROMANCE, and HEARTbrEAK. “We’re going to make some gods-damned room,” she said fiercely.
“You can’t be doing that with all of them, though,” said Viv, staring around the shop in bewilderment.
“No, but this is the perfect time to reorganize. When the shipment arrives, we’ll be ready.”
Viv looked doubtful. “I think it’s a great idea and all, but how many of these do you actually think you can sell?
” She picked up another parcel from the stack, this one marked ADVENTURE, BOUNTIES, and BLOODSHED.
Actually, that sounded pretty good. She was seized by an impulse to open it. That was promising, anyway.
“Well, Satchel and I were talking,” said Fern, hustling back to sort through some of the piles. She checked the titles, sometimes opening them to flick through the first few pages, and then arranged them using an incomprehensible system known only to her.
“You were?”
“Indeed, m’lady,” replied Satchel.
Fern handed him three volumes, and the homunculus bent over the side table, which had been requisitioned as a workstation. With deft folds, he wrapped the stack, withdrew a length of twine, and snapped it with his bony fingertips. Then he swiftly tied the package with a tidy bow.
Fern’s eyes sparkled with more energy than Viv recalled ever seeing.
“A boardwalk sale. Right outside. There’s another passenger vessel due in two days.
We’ll lay out tables, spread these across them, and see how many we can get into willing hands.
And what we don’t?” She shrugged. “I guess we’ll pile them out of the way, like you said. ”
Viv thought Fern might be overestimating how many she’d be able to offload, but the rattkin’s mood was so high, her expression so hopeful, that she didn’t have the heart to dampen her spirits.
“So,” she said at last, feeling like a giant towering over tiny buildings of words, fearful of where to tread. “What can I do to help?”
Fern held up an inkwell and pen. “How’s your handwriting?”
They worked together companionably for most of the day.
Fern fretted over what to package up and began the process of reshelving volumes that were to remain in the shop.
Satchel tirelessly wrapped the books she passed his way, and at Fern’s direction, Viv inked the paper with two or three words evoking the stories bound within.
“So, Satchel,” said Viv, squinting as she blocked in another letter, fingertips black with ink. “How long, exactly, have you been, uh …” She deliberated over the right word. “Alive?”
The homunculus gently detached Potroast, who was attempting to remove one of his fibulae. “I couldn’t say, m’lady. I have—”
“ ‘Viv’ is fine, Satchel.”
After a brief hesitation, the homunculus said, “Yes, m’lady Viv. I have seen much, but I cannot track the time when I am away. There is no way for me to know.”
“But Varine created you, didn’t she?”
Fern paused what she was doing to listen as well.
Satchel appeared to think about that, as though trying to decide whether an answer constituted breaking the covenant he was bound by. “She did.”
“So you’re not older than her.”
“And how old is that?” asked Fern.
It was Viv’s turn to pause. “Hells, I have no idea. I guess being a necromancer makes that harder to answer. And that probably counts as one of your Lady’s secrets. I bet you can’t tell us either.”
Satchel shook his head apologetically.
“You said you’ve seen much, though?” prompted Fern.
“Oh my, yes.” His hollow voice took on a wistful tone as he tied off another bow.
“Many wonders. Perfect beauties. Great seas set aflame by sunsets. Endless underground lakes in soundless caverns. The winter light on mountain snow that has never thawed.” He sobered.
“And much that I would forget, were I able.”
“Satchel, you have the soul of a poet,” murmured Fern.
“So, what did you actually do for her?” asked Viv. “Is that something you can say?”
“I served,” replied Satchel. “In whatever way the Lady required.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t sweep and dust, though, am I right? Probably weren’t wrapping packages?”
When the homunculus replied, his echoing voice sounded even farther away, a mournful wind in a sea cave. “I did not.”
Fern wasn’t sorting books anymore. She dusted her paws on her smock and regarded Satchel with a pained expression. “I asked once before, but if you could do what you wanted—anything—and you didn’t have to worry about Varine—your Lady—what would that be?”
He wound a fresh length of twine around a package, tying it off more deliberately. He stared down at his phalanges splayed across the paper.
“I cannot speak against the Lady,” he said. And then would say no more.
“What in the hells?” said Fern.
Viv glanced up from blowing on fresh ink. Her hands were cramping, and she’d blocked in about as many words as she could stand. Behind her towered neat stacks of paper-wrapped parcels. “What is it?”
“This book,” said Fern. “It was wedged in the back. This isn’t mine. I wonder—”
“Don’t open it, m’lady!” cried Satchel, whirling toward the rattkin, his bony hands outstretched. The spool of thread flew from his pelvis and unrolled across the floor. “I beg of you!”
His tone was so plaintive that Fern stopped in the act of doing just that. The book was exceptionally large, half again the size of most of those in the shop. A real tome. “What—?”
“It is not one of your books,” said Satchel. “It is … it is—” His voice became strangled, choked by a growing distance, as though he were being dragged into a tunnel.
An image of Balthus, his hands falling away from the shelves, sprang to Viv’s mind.
“It’s one of hers,” she said, rising to her feet, thigh thrumming as blood rushed to it after so long spent in the same position.
“Varine’s?” whispered Fern.
When Satchel didn’t correct her, Viv said, “Balthus. He hid it here. I wondered why in the hells he’d been in your shop.” She held out a hand for the book. “If there’s someone in this room who should be dealing with unholy necromancer nonsense, it’s me. May I?”
Fern narrowed her eyes. “Didn’t you get stabbed and dumped in this town because of unholy necromancer nonsense?”
“Yeah. But I survived, didn’t I?”
The rattkin looked like she wanted to argue the point, but she handed the tome over.
It was much heavier than it looked. And it looked heavy.
Viv expected the book to be ancient, some derelict grimoire of forbidden knowledge, but the black leather cover seemed almost new.
No text graced the surface, although tiny embossing wreathed the edges.
The patterns reminded her of the fine inscriptions on Satchel’s bones.
The edges of the pages gleamed a gold-flecked red.
And she could smell it. In her hands, that blood-in-snow scent wafted up from the leather. An involuntary shiver scurried up her arms.
“Yeah,” she breathed. “Satchel said Balthus stole something else, and this is definitely it.” She looked to the homunculus. “I’m right, aren’t I? Now that it’s in my hands, there’s no secret to protect, is there?”
“It is hers,” managed Satchel, although his voice remained weak.
“What happens if I open it?”
He tried to respond, jaw quivering, but again, he seemed incapable.
Viv ran a finger along the edge of the leather binding. It felt wet and slick, like a cave wall beaded with moisture from a dampness deep within.
“Fuck it,” she said, and flipped back the cover.
The page was black.
Not inked black. Not blank. But darkness itself. It absolutely devoured light. A tiny margin of creamy paper bordered the null space. Viv thought she felt the faint kiss of wind on her face, and the smell of lightning strikes.
“Fuck!” cried Fern. “You just opened it? You’re all right, aren’t you? No … necromancer nonsense?”
“Oh, there’s necromancer nonsense all right.” Viv glanced at Satchel, who was wringing his bony hands in dismay.
She hovered an index finger over the blackness, but couldn’t bring herself to touch it. The air above the page was cold, an icy breath radiating from the paper.
Carefully, Viv peeled the page up by its thin margin and turned to the next.
Another black page. And then another. And another. Hundreds. At the bottom of each, an inked number, increasing in sequence, just like any other book.
“Well?” Fern’s voice pitched even higher in anxiety.
Viv shook her head. “I don’t know.” She carefully carried the book over to the side table and cleared the paper from the surface with a sweep of her forearm.
She gently laid the tome open upon the tabletop and stepped back.
“Gods,” breathed Fern, edging toward it.
Viv thought she could hear a sound emanating from the impossible night of that page, the chime of a glass sharply struck. “Hang on,” she said. She snatched the pen from the inkwell, knocking off the excess ink.
Satchel continued to observe but didn’t try to stop them. Not yet, anyway. Viv took that as a positive sign.
She flipped the pen in her grip, feather down, and dipped it toward the page.
The feather disappeared into the blackness as though it were a pool of ink from which no light could reflect.
Fern covered her mouth with both paws, and Viv withdrew the pen.
It was whole, and unmarred.
“Well, that’s the first test done,” said Viv.
“The first test?” protested Fern. “What’s the second—”
Viv set aside the pen and opened and closed her right hand. Then, thinking better of it, she shook her head.
“Oh thank fuck,” said Fern. “I thought you were going to put your hand—”
The rattkin squeaked shrilly as Viv drove her left arm into the blackness of the page, all the way up to the elbow, and drew it back out, fast.
Flexing her fingers and staring at the book in wonder, Viv finished, “That’s the second.”
Fern sputtered, waving her paws in apoplexy, and if she ever regained her composure, Viv figured the language would be pretty spectacular.