The Wild Library
They scrubbed themselves clean of blood, and Anya wrung out her shoulder-length hair. She pulled it up in a bun, and dusted her clothes. ‘The more normal we look, the fewer questions people ask,’ she said. ‘And librarians notice things.’
The libraries were well signposted: the Philosophy, Natural History, the Political Sciences and – the largest – the Ferox Library. ‘That’s the ones!’ said Ratwin. ‘The Ferox; it has the rarest bookses.’
They followed the signs at the swiftest walk they dared.
The streets grew crowded with summer hordes as they moved past theatres, cafes, shops with their Midsummer decorations still hanging in the windows.
A coin in her mouth, Ratwin darted into one as they passed, and came out with two white sugared doughnuts slung around her horn.
‘Sugars for shocks,’ she said. ‘Eat. It’s medicinalising.’
The doughnuts were hot from the stove and they tasted optimistic.
We can do this, Christopher told himself. They had faced down death together before, he and Anya Argen, and they had won. They could do it again. He licked sugar from his fingers. Not just that they could – they would do it.
He kept an eye on the sky as they walked. It was alive with the sweep and call of birds – the sky always was in Glimouria. Firebirds passed in a flock overhead and a phoenix dipped and wheeled around the spires of the ancient city. Higher still, two black spots circled in the clouds.
‘Are those stymphalians?’ said Anya.
‘Impossible to know,’ said Christopher. Privately he was sure they were.
‘Do you think the bandits knew?’ said Anya. ‘That Irian was going to report them to the Senate?’
‘I don’t know. I think so. Why else take her, and not one of us?’ said Christopher.
‘Exactlies,’ said Ratwin. ‘So they cans stop her knowledges, and they cans takes a ransom. Killing two birdses with one stones.’
‘An unfortunate phrasing in the circumstances,’ said Jacques. He sat on Christopher’s head, his claws digging aggressively into his skull.
‘Jacques, can you stop that? You make a bad hat.’
‘I will do as I wish.’ And then the little dragon burst out, in a sudden high wail, ‘I must protest that nobody has consulted me! This plan is an outrageous risk! If I had my fire, it would be different, but this is an imbecility!’
‘Jacques, we’re going. You don’t have to come,’ said Christopher.
‘Nonsense. You are my biographer. You must be with me at all times. But I urge you to reconsider and go home to Nighthand at once. We should not take such a foolish risk!’
‘Not evens,’ said Ratwin, ‘for Irians Guinne?’
‘Not for anybody! Dragons are proud narcissists. Humans are to us acolytes or meals.’
‘And yet you haven’t left us,’ said Anya. The dragon only puffed a great gout of smoke directly down into Christopher’s face, and shut his mouth with a tiny clack.
The largest library in the City of Scholars was more than eight hundred years old.
It rose up around a square courtyard, five storeys high, its turrets and pointed windows gesturing ever skywards.
At the huge oak double doors was a lectern on which perched a harpy, with a long queue of scholars lining up in front of her.
Before Christopher could stop her, Anya strode past them to the harpy. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘We’d like to borrow a book.’
There was an immediate angry clamour from behind her.
‘There’s a queue, you know!’ said a woman at the back. She had a hat decked with ornamental flowers and a furious face.
Anya looked at Christopher, suddenly unsure. ‘What do they mean?’
‘It’s a queue.’
‘Is that … some kind of dance?’
Sometimes he forgot how long she had spent in a palace and its surrounding grounds; how little of the rest of the world she had seen.
She had learned the rules for a princess; the twenty-one official smiles (among them innocent, flattering, deceptively gormless and ominously toothy) and the five approved laughs: delighted, amused, polite, warning and tyrannical.
But she had rarely been in a shop, or handled money, or stood in a crowd.
‘It’s a line,’ he said, leading her to the back of it. ‘They’re all waiting to go in.’
She flushed scarlet. ‘Oh,’ she muttered.
She put her hand up to her shoulder, where Koo should be.
But he was not there, only the cut from Darius’s blade.
‘Another thing I didn’t know.’ She bit her lip and tried to keep her head high.
She took hold of her necklace: the loquillan, given to her by her mother. ‘I don’t know anything.’
Jacques sniffed, and flew to eat the decorative flowers from the hat of the woman in front of them. ‘Then you will learn,’ he said.
They came at last to the front of the queue. The harpy – her dark-haired human head on the body of an eagle – looked at them over her spectacles. ‘Children are not permitted in the Ferox Library without special dispensation. Many of the texts here are dangerous.’
‘Dangerous how?’ said Jacques sceptically. ‘Books have no fire.’
The harpy ruffled her feathers. ‘Firstly, not all the texts are books. Some are enchanted mirrors, crystal balls, scrolls and oracles. And secondly, books can do unexpected things. Some do, in fact, have fire: we have an extensive collection of fire-breathing paperbacks.’ She looked past them.
‘Would you step aside? You are causing an obstruction.’
Anya looked in anguish at Christopher. He was wondering if they could make a sprint – leap past the harpy and inside – when from somewhere around Christopher’s ankles a tiny voice spoke.
‘Might I be able to assist you?’ It was a mouse, carrying a miniature leather satchel, a pen tucked behind one ear.
‘Meri!’ said Christopher.
‘The little batrachomyomachian mouse!’ said Jacques. ‘The assistant librarian of Glimt! Delicious.’ He licked his lips, and Christopher glared at him.
But the tiny mouse did not notice; he merely quivered with pleasure from his claws to his whiskers.
‘At your service, dear patrons!’ He spoke very fast. ‘What a piece of luck that we should meet! I came yesterday on the back of a gagana to find a book on the history of the fendthorn, Spina herculis, lest I perhaps be asked to assist with its management. And then I saw you! And I came at once, in case I might by any great luck be permitted to help!’
‘You could help me,’ said Jacques, ‘with my hunger pangs.’
Christopher put his hand, hard, over Jacques’s wings. ‘Thank you, Meri. We need to read everything we can about the Cerberus dog.’
‘Of course! With delight! May I ask why?’
This had not occurred to Christopher. ‘It’s … for a … project.’
‘Of course! A project! A bravura endeavour for a hunter of knowledge and a seeker after that most precious gem, the truth! The Cerberus, Cerberus trifaux, is found only on the island of Great Caruta, so we will go to the Carutan room.’ Meri turned to the harpy.
‘They’re with me. I am an assistant librarian. ’
The harpy raised consecutive eyebrows – the first expressing scepticism, the second discontent – but she let them pass.
Meri led them into a vestibule and up a magnificent flight of marble stairs, scurrying ahead of them on all fours.
‘This way, please! Look out for the Encyclopaedia Glimouriana – they roam freely,’ he said, as they passed a large hardback book with a dozen angular papery legs, scurrying down the stairs.
‘It’s for a project?’ said Jacques in his ear. ‘The last actor I met who was as poor as you, Christopher, I ate, by way of review.’
Meri led the way down a sun-drenched corridor.
Christopher tried to glance into the rooms as they hurried past; in one a young sphinx was engraving maps of the stars into the stone wall with a sabre-like claw, watched by a cluster of scholars.
He thought of Naravirala, and the note he had sent.
Too late now for any reply: he would not be home to read it.
‘In here, if you please,’ said Meri. ‘Mind the step! The Great Caruta Room!’
The room was long, paved with black and white flagstones. Crystalline light poured in through high windows, illuminating the rows and rows of books and the scholars who moved among the shelves, handling the volumes as though they were gold.
‘What is it you wish to know about the Cerberus?’
‘Everything,’ said Anya.
‘Ah! You are an epistemological completist! What bliss, to assist a knowledge totalist!’ Meri went scampering across the floor.
‘I find it difficult, with my paws, to pull the books … Perhaps you could help me? Here – this one is on the Cerberus’s breeding habits; this one is on allergies.
This one is on Hercules – he travelled through the Archipelago, many thousands of years ago, and brought the Cerberus out of the underworld to breed it.
This one is on how you calm the dog: it loves music, as I’m sure you know, particularly birdsong, sea shanties and contemporary jazz. If you dance, even better.’
Meri moved across the shelves, pausing in front of books for Christopher to pull them out. They were warm to the touch; they felt precious and rare.
‘This one is on the use of its whiskers in potions … Be careful with that book, it screams if you fold over the pages.’
‘I think what we need to know for our project,’ said Anya, ‘is how to find the dog.’
‘Ah!’ said Meri. ‘Quite so! You wish to do fieldwork! You are a true scholar, with a researcher’s instincts. But it will not be possible to actually go in person of course.’
‘Why not?’ said Anya.
‘But, my dear young patron – as I said, the Cerberus is found only on Great Caruta. There are some living in the impassable mountains, and one who is kept locked in a kennel as a hunting dog in the castle of Great Caruta, on the southern shore.’
‘And why can’t we just go and visit the castle?’ said Christopher. ‘Give each head a biscuit, scratch three sets of ears, make friends?’
Meri shook his head so hard his whiskers quivered. ‘Because Great Caruta,’ he said, ‘is the island of giants.’