Chapter 3 #7
And found a foothold in the wall with my toe, giving me just enough time to get my hand back on the rope.
If I hadn’t done that, I’d have fallen. I hung there for a very long five seconds before I managed to scrape together enough strength of purpose to carry on climbing.
Had something (someone?) pushed my toe into that crevice in the mortar, which just happened to be there?
There’s that bit in scripture where the Tempter says, it’s all right if you jump off the temple roof, because if you do, flights of angels will bear you up on their wings and won’t suffer your foot to be bruised.
For crying out loud, I told myself, and went on climbing.
“What took you so long?” she hissed in my ear, as she dragged me up over the rampart.
“Nearly fell off.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” She grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and pushed me down to my knees, below the skyline. “Now listen. I didn’t see anyone, but you can bet there’s patrols, so we need to get moving. Where’s the library?”
I looked at her in the pale moonlight. “I don’t know.”
“You what? Oh fuck.”
“Why on earth would I know where the—?”
“Shut up and let me think.” I shut up. A few heartbeats later she said, “Well?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s a library, right? So, if you were a library, where would you be?”
It says a great deal about her that she didn’t hit me for that.
I think I would have, in her shoes. “It’s a long, narrow building,” I said, “twelve storeys high, oriented north?south. Purpose-built, quite recently. When you’re designing a library, the most important thing is getting as much light as possible.
Second most important thing is avoiding damp, third is preventing fire, fourth is probably security.
But light’s the biggie. You want to be able to start using it as early as possible in the morning, and you want to carry on using it as late as possible in the evening.
Therefore,” I said, snatching a moment to draw breath, “you want a long gallery that runs the width of the building, with very tall windows. Avoiding damp rules out the top and bottom floors, preventing fire means you want to keep well away from the kitchens, the main hall, anywhere there’s flues or chimneys, because you really don’t want a spark or a cinder floating in through one of those tall windows. How am I doing?”
“Stating the obvious,” she said. “Did you notice any tall windows when we were eyeballing the place?”
“No,” I said; and then, “No,” I repeated joyfully. “And if there had been any I’d have noticed them, you can bet your life. Which means we know exactly where the library is.”
She was about to say something, but didn’t. Instead she nodded. “The bit we couldn’t see,” she said, “because the temple portico was in the way.”
“Precisely,” I said. “That’s looking at it from the east. No, sorry, I mean the west. And you can’t see it from the eastern side, because that’s the king’s private jetty, and beyond that is the sea.”
“Brilliant,” she said, which was nice of her, all things considered. “All right, then, we’re in business. All we need to do is line ourselves up with the temple portico and take a bearing.”
We looked out into the pitch darkness. “In the morning,” I said.
She didn’t like that, I could tell. “We could nip back down the rope—”
“No way. I’m not climbing down any rope in the dark, and I’m not staying up here on my own. Anyway, by the time you’ve done all that it’ll be sunrise. We stay put, nice and quiet and peaceful. Nobody’s going to come up here until it’s time to raise the flag.”
She hadn’t noticed the flagpole. “We can’t stay here,” she said. “We need to keep moving.”
“You do what you like. I’m just going to close my eyes for two minutes.”
“You can’t go to sleep. We’re in hostile territory. The whole building is swarming with goons.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. “You go and reconnoitre, if it’ll make you feel better. Try not to kill anyone if you can possibly help it.”
“Arsehole.” She jumped up, then sat down again. “If we wait till daylight, you said it yourself, it’s a library, they make as much use of the light as possible. Soon as the sun comes up, there’ll be people in there.”
I yawned. Couldn’t help it, I was shattered. “When the sun comes up,” I said, “we find out where the library is. Then we lie low during the day, and then when it gets dark—”
“A whole day. You’re out of your mind.”
“I’m tired,” I protested. “And if I’m going to copy this wretched book, as and when we find it, I’m going to need to be fresh and sharp, so I don’t make mistakes. It’s actually hard manual labour, writing. After a couple of hours, your fingers go numb.”
“We’re not going to copy the book, we’re going to steal it.”
“That’s not the plan,” I said. “That’s why that horrible woman picked me. We only steal it if making a copy’s out of the question. You know that.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, almost pleading. “This isn’t some monastery back home, these people are serious. It’ll take you hours to write the whole thing out, with a light showing. No, we get the book and we run for it. Be realistic.”
I suddenly realised that I was being brave, for the good of the mission.
Brave as two short planks. And she was right.
These people were serious, and if we got caught we wouldn’t be sent home with a sternly worded diplomatic note, we’d be killed.
Furthermore, the Loyal Opposition was keen for me to succeed.
On the other hand – there was no other hand. Even so.
“We’ve got to try,” I said. “Look, how’s this?
We wait till morning, we spy out the land.
We find out if there’s regular patrols. We acquire actual information, rather than just guessing and assuming.
We make an educated assessment of the risk.
If it’s stupidly dangerous, fine. We pinch the book and leg it.
But if we find it’s possible to do what we were sent to do, we do it. ”
“What’s got into you?” she said. “Since when did you have a backbone?”
Good question. Unfortunately, I couldn’t answer it without reference to the Loyal Opposition, the grand design and the long game, and since I’d resolved not to keep her updated about that side of things – while we’d been bickering, the answer had somehow dropped into place inside my mind.
The Loyal Opposition wanted me to steal the book.
That was the premise around which they’d reformulated their plans.
So I had two choices: abort the mission and go home empty-handed, which would lead to horrible consequences for Svangerd and myself; or do what that bloody woman originally told me to do, copy the book.
Which was why I was here, and not somebody else.
Which was why the Loyal Opposition was bugging me.
Hence the new and largely unwelcome bony growth running up my back and into my head. “Ask yourself this,” I said. “Who are you more scared of, Aviragus’s steelnecks, or Mother Tysapherna? Be honest.”
She took well over a second to answer. “Mother Tysapherna.”
“Me, too. We sit tight, and in the morning we go exploring.”