Chapter 10 #2
“It did. The way we read it, Tysapherna wanted the demon so she could tame it and use it to kill everyone who stood between her and the chair of the standing committee on doctrine. But the demon had other ideas. It planned on getting her that chair, then using her to launch a crusade against heresy, right across the known world. Fortunately—” She paused.
“The hell with it,” she said. “The fact is, the Order has sources embedded deep in the highest levels of the Loyal Opposition. We only ever hear from them when something really big is about to happen. Like now. That’s when we know we’ve got to pull out all the stops.
They told us about Tysapherna. If this crusade had been allowed to happen, it’d have meant the most terrible war since the Fall, a catastrophic split in Holy Mother Church, the destruction of whole cities, the loss of everything we’ve slowly been rebuilding for the last five hundred years.
I think you’ll agree, losing a few books was a small price to pay. ”
I looked at her. It amazed me that anyone could be so naive. “No,” I said. “I don’t.”
Maybe just for a second, a tiny flicker of doubt crossed her mind.
Then she said, “Well, then, we’ll just have to agree to differ on that score.
Meanwhile, the threat has been averted, and you’ll be pleased to know that the demon will have been dispersed, at least for the time being.
Demons have what you might call a boiling point.
Get them hot enough and they… evaporate, I guess is the closest analogy.
They condense again later, but it can take years.
So as far as you’re concerned, it’s gone, and it can’t hurt you any more. ”
I thought about that. “I don’t hate it,” I said. “I never did. It’s just an animal, doing what it needs to do in order to survive.”
She looked at me. I don’t think she approved of what she saw. “You’re a real piece of work,” she said. “But what the heck, you write a beautiful page of uncials. As of now, you’re officially on my team. I’m declaring you recovered and fit for duty.”
I took a moment to choose my words carefully. “Piss off,” I said.
She didn’t like that, either. “It’s not up to you,” she said, and stood up. “Guard, get this man washed. He smells like a pigsty.”
It felt like hell, for a little while. But then I remembered, hell doesn’t exist. And someone else had set fire to the library, not me.
I was in the cloister. The room they’d assigned me to was just off it, and I was allowed a short mid-morning break, though I tended not to take it, because when you’re copying you really don’t want to waste valuable morning light. But on this occasion I needed a breath of air.
It was a cold morning, under a cloudless blue sky. When I walked into the cloister, I saw her sitting on the bench that runs under the window. She was turned away from me, but I’d know the back of her head anywhere.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”
“Hello,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
No answer. I sat down next to her. She moved away a little. “You heard about the library,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But they got that thing, which is what matters. Grimhild says it’ll be ten years before it recovers.”
I hated her for saying that, but only for a moment.
I read once in Lovic’s Chronicles about a boy whose job it was to guard the henhouse.
But a fox broke in and killed three chickens; then two more the next night, and then three more, in spite of the boy sitting up all night with a dark lantern and a big stick.
So he decided to be rid of the fox once and for all.
He piled brushwood and brash all round the henhouse and drenched it in tar; and the next night, as soon as he heard frantic clucking, he smashed the lantern against the piled-up brash.
The whole lot went up with a whoosh. The fox didn’t have a chance to get out, and neither did the forty-seven remaining chickens.
Oddly enough, the boy was the hero of the story.
Moral: different things matter to different people.
“That’s all right, then,” I said.
“So we’re working for Grimhild now,” she said. “I think that’s probably a good thing. Simocatta’s a jerk.”
“You don’t mind, then.”
“Grimhild’s a good woman. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d be dead by now, most likely. Or worse.”
“I was all wrong about her,” I said. “I honestly thought she wanted the demon for herself.”
“Only because it made you think that.”
More absolution. Like the summers in Blemmya; it’s baking hot, and no rain falls for four months, then the skies burst and everybody’s flooded out of their houses.
“I should’ve known, if I’d been thinking straight,” I said.
“I figured Tysapherna sent us to get the demon so she could use it as a weapon, but then Grimhild found out and wanted it, too. But I never stopped to consider what the demon wanted.” I stopped.
I was thinking faster than I could follow. “Stupid of me.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Svangerd said. “It wanted to torture me as much as it possibly could, then move on to Tysapherna. And then it made them burn down the monastery. At least we stopped it, for now. That’s the main thing.”
There’s that hymn we sing at matins, so frequently that I’ve long since stopped hearing the words.
God is working His purpose out, as year succeeds to year.
If He existed, what would the purpose have been in all that?
To get rid of Tysapherna, an unworthy and misguided servant.
To give victory, and glory within her own tightly circumscribed circle, to Grimhild.
To get rid of two libraries, containing unique books with dangerously subversive content.
To transfer Svangerd and me to Grimhild’s command.
But any fool, let alone the omnipotent shaper of Providence, could’ve achieved those objectives so much more easily.
Tysapherna scratches her finger, it turns septic, she dies.
Grimhild drags a demon out of some poor mad woman in the market.
Sparks from a chimney float on the breeze and land on the library roof.
Or, better still: Tysapherna was never tempted in the first place and lives a long, useful life in the service of Holy Mother Church.
The demons aren’t given the power to torment frail, vulnerable humans, and Grimhild’s speciality was never necessary.
The books were never written in the first place.
“I think I know what happened,” I said.
She turned her head and looked at me. “Please,” she said, “don’t tell me. I really don’t want to hear it.”
Fair enough. “It’ll be all right,” I told her.
“What on earth makes you think that?” She frowned.
“It’ll never be all right again, not ever.
” She closed her eyes, partly so she wouldn’t have to look at me.
“It’s over,” she said, “I was tested, and I was given the grace to endure, for which I’m truly thankful.
I guess the whole point of a test is so you’ll know if you’re any good or not.
I passed because He thought I was worth helping, and saving.
That’s the best thing ever, I suppose. It doesn’t feel like it right now, but it will, one day.
But nothing will ever be the same, not after that.
Still, I must be in the right place now.
And all that must’ve been necessary, to bring me here and make me ready.
You, too,” she added. “Presumably you now have sufficient moral fibre. God only knows where you got it from.”
From you, I was tempted to say, but didn’t. Ah, that cunning old tempter: she never gives up, even when she’s no more than a cloud of fine ash. “They’ve got me copying books,” I said. “You have no idea how wonderful it is to be doing that again.”
“Really.” She scowled. “I’m working in the laundry all this week. Then if I’m really good, they’ll let me have a week peeling carrots. Grounding myself, she calls it. It’s really good therapy, apparently.”
Well, I thought. And to peel a carrot you need a knife. She’d like that.
I wrote out the last words of Lusenna’s Cosmology, then signed my name at the bottom; my name in religion, not the other one.
My new name in religion; the old one was somehow tainted, according to Grimhild.
My guess is, she didn’t want Simocatta to find out she’d poached his best scribe on a somewhat flimsy pretext.
So: Galasius scripsit, I wrote, in small but elegant letters, thereby filling in an inch of blank space that would’ve made the page look unbalanced.
I glanced up at the window. Still at least an hour of good writing light left. On the desk in front of me were twelve sheets of parchment; nothing special, just thrice-erased lowland calfskin, basic material for bread-and-butter work. Without realising it, I’d just trimmed and sharpened a new pen.
I knew what had happened. I also had a fair idea of what was going to happen next.
In which case, bring it on. I reached for the soapstone and the ruler and started drawing the lines.
That’s good, honest, mindless work, calling for neatness and precision.
You need to think about what you’re doing, which means you can’t think about anything else.
So you turn your back on the clamouring, aggressive, angry parliament of your thoughts, and you can’t hear them any more.
You draw the last line. You put the soapstone and the ruler on the edge of the desk, where they won’t get in the way of your elbow when you’re writing.
You pick up the pen and dip it in the ink.
I can write really fast when I need to, and I can fit a lot of words into twelve sheets of parchment.
As I wrote the last words, a shadow fell across me, obscuring the page. I didn’t look up. “Piss off,” I said.
He was peering over my shoulder. “Good lad,” he said. “Aren’t you going to sign it?”
“No.”
“Funny,” he said, “the way you’ve taken to signing your work lately. You never used to.”