Pile of Bones (29 page)

T
HE MAIN FLOOR OF THE LIBRARY WAS SILENT
and bathed in caustic yellow light. The bank of computers blinked in time with each other, as if delivering a coded message:
Please deliver us from Facebook.
Or maybe it was Bejeweled. Whatever games people played to distract themselves from the apocalypse of term papers. The construction zone—what would eventually become the new periodical reading room—was draped in plastic, and Ingrid could see the bony outcroppings of steel support structures beneath it. There was caution tape everywhere, rustling slightly with each breath of air-conditioning. The circulation desk was empty. For a moment, she wanted to jump over the counter and see what was in that restricted space, partially obscured by stacks of reserve textbooks and interlibrary loans. It was probably just another office, but secretly, she imagined that it held forbidden texts, like the monastic library in
The Name of the Rose
. She glanced at the self-checkout machine and thought once more of Neil, who adored the
thump
that it made whenever you dragged a book’s spine along the demagnetizing strip.

The screen invited passersby to scan their materials. Blue and green arrows showed you every step. Ingrid remained still for a heartbeat, watching the helpful animation.
Touch here for knowledge.
Once, she’d found an old book that wasn’t cataloged, and she could still remember the look of sublime joy on the librarian’s face.
This isn’t in the system. If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll need to create a new entry.
Her eyes lit up, as if she’d just found a hoard of pirate’s treasure. She delicately removed the old punch card, still affixed to the inside cover. Ingrid wondered if she’d pocketed the paper relic when nobody was looking. Maybe she had a box full of them at home, yellowed around the edges, slightly aromatic, like ancient recipe cards that still carried a hint of spice.

Where was Mardian? She heard nothing, save for the rustle of plastic and the occasional squeak of a computer rebooting. She remembered the ghost of the spado’s smile, hovering between care and amusement. But he wasn’t a spado—not here. Surely, on this side of the park, he must have been—intact? The more she thought about that word, the less she was certain of what it meant. Spadones were regular customers at the basia. However they’d been cut, it seemed to have little effect on their natural desires. They shared much in common with meretrices, who were often accused of being cold-blooded.

She looked at Oliver. The dagger in his hand looked absurdly fake, but its edge was real. Was he also cold-blooded? He’d seemed upset when he came to her, directly following the basilissa’s banquet. She wanted to trust him. But Carl’s many suspicions were far from groundless. Whether he was Oliver, Felix, or whatever lived in between them both, he’d always been talented at rolling the dice. He knew how to pick the winning side, and right now, the odds were against them. Was he planning to run again? When she saw him standing on the doorstep, her first reaction was to say,
Are you lost?
The park had always served as a frontier that separated their lives. In Anfractus, they passed each
other all the time, nodding curtly. But he hadn’t lived in Regina for years. There’d been no worry of running into each other at the mall, Neil in tow, stammering,
Oh, wow, it’s been so long—

“Do you think he’s here?” Shelby murmured.

Oliver kept the knife level, but his grip was awkward. “He’s watching us. That’s what he’s best at. Peering through keyholes, listening through cracks in the wall.”

“Unless I’m mistaken,” Ingrid said, “you’re fairly good at that yourself.”

“Running a basia requires vigilance. Drauca and I need to ensure that the clients are behaving themselves. The spado’s creeping about is different.”

Shelby chuckled. “You dislike him nearly as much as Carl dislikes you.”

“Hey,” Carl said. “
Dislike
is a strong word. Let’s just say I don’t trust the majority of people who wear masks for a living. Bank robbers. Circus freaks. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. I’m not about to hug any of them.”

“Everyone shut up.” Shelby was staring at the counter. She lowered her voice. “There’s somebody here. I can feel it.”

They were silent for a moment. Ingrid couldn’t hear anything. Perhaps it was Morgan, and not Shelby, who’d caught the noise. She adjusted her grip on the sword. Fel was closer to the surface than she’d ever been. Their shadows, as Oliver called them, were stronger in this moment. Like Peter Pan, she could sew Fel to her foot and never let her go. Was it possible? People had different personalities, different sides to them, that much she understood. But Fel was supposed to be a character. A miles didn’t care about paying her SaskTel bill on time. If Fel took over, she’d go straight to Bushwacker’s to pick a fight with the biggest mouth-breather at the bar. Fel cared about winning. What did she know about family? She’d always been alone.

Ingrid blinked.
Had
Fel always been alone? Those memories were beyond her grasp. They said that you had to play a character for years before you could really know where
they came from or what they wanted. Sometimes she caught flashes of a childhood, a small room in a dirty tenement building above the Subura, reeking from the tanner’s shop below. She must have had parents. To her, Fel had always been a chipped sword, defiant and worn.

Shelby was gesturing to Carl. He stared at her, not understanding. She rolled her eyes. Then, in a single motion, she leapt over the counter. Ingrid heard something that sounded like a squeak. Then Shelby stood up. In her left hand, she gripped the shirt collar of a dazed-looking girl. Her red hair looked strangely golden beneath the emergency lights, and she was still clutching a hardcover book. Her mouth opened slightly, but nothing came out.

“I knew I heard something,” Shelby said.

Finally, the girl cleared her throat and managed to speak. “Could you let go of me? I’m not going to—” Her eyes widened as she took in the four of them. “Are you wearing body armor? Is this some kind of intense paintball tournament?”

“Why were you hiding down there?”

She looked at Shelby with undisguised curiosity. “You have a bow.”

“Answer the question.”

“I was on the second floor when the alarm started. I came downstairs, and the place was totally empty. I was just about to leave, but—” She looked beyond the counter, at the half-concealed room. “Okay, it’s stupid, I know, but I’ve always wanted to see the uncataloged books, and they’ve got stacks of them, just sitting there. The librarians had all left. I just wanted to take a peek. There’s this engineering text that’s been listed as ‘in progress’ for weeks on the library website, and I really need it for my thesis. I just wanted to see if it was actually there, and not just a ghost in the machine.”

Shelby was also looking beyond the counter. “I—suppose I can understand that,” she said. “But why didn’t you leave?”

“Well, I heard these guys come in. I thought they might
be librarians, and—I know it’s childish, but my first instinct was to hide. They disappeared after a few minutes, and then I tried to leave, but the doors won’t open.”

“What do you mean?” Oliver asked. “They have to stay open in case of a fire.”

“I know. But someone
melted
them. At least that’s what it looks like. They’re fused. I tried to open them, but they won’t budge.”

Ingrid walked up to the doors. The girl was right. The metal edges were fused together, like two strips of Play-Doh. No seams or bubbles—it was as if they’d always been a single piece of black metal. She walked back over to the counter.

“She’s right. The doors are sealed.”

“Mardian,” Oliver said. “I don’t know how he’s done it—”

“Wait—” The girl stared at them. “You know—I mean—” Her eyes flickered rapidly, trying to study all of them at once. “How do you—”

“Bee!” Shelby cried.

Carl began swatting at the empty air next to him.

“No. Not here, brain trust. On her shirt. Look.”

Ingrid peered at the girl’s long-sleeved shirt. It had a bumblebee sewn onto the shoulder. For a moment, she could almost hear it buzz. Then she remembered what Oliver had told her about the scene at the basilissa’s banquet. A mechanical bee had summoned three hungry silenoi, like some kind of dog whistle. The work of a master artifex.

“Julia?” Shelby asked.

The girl blinked in confusion. “Morgan?”

“On this side, I’m Shelby.”

“The artifex,” Ingrid said. “I thought you were a citizen.”

She laughed. “Only the rich apprentices can manage that. I’m flat broke.”

“But—” Shelby stared at her. “You said that you had a room at the gens. And you remembered your mother. I thought that only citizens had access to deep memory structures.”

“My mother was famous. People are always telling me stories about her. As for the room”—she stared at the floor—“I may have exaggerated. When I said ‘my chamber,’ I should have said ‘the spare room that I sneaked into.’ It’s not like anyone notices me. To them, I’m only a shadow of what my mother used to be. Or Julia’s mother. Sometimes I can’t tell us apart. I’m Sam. I think.”

“This is all very informative,” Oliver said, “but we’re still the prey in this scenario, and there’s no way out. I suggest we get out of the open.”

Sam gave him a sideways glance. “Who’s this?”

“Just call him Dr. Love,” Carl said.

“No. Do not call me that.”

“Too late. It’s going to stick—I can feel it.”

“The doctor—I mean Oliver—says that there’s a basement exit,” Shelby whispered. “It’s possible that Mardian and his crew don’t know about it.”

“Crew?” Sam looked around the empty room. “How many of them are there?”

“We don’t know.”

She shook her head. “I knew I should have stayed home to mark exams.” Then her expression softened slightly. “Andrew—”

“—is alive.”

“Oh. I didn’t—I mean, I hoped, but—”

“After this is done,” Oliver hissed, “you can share everything on your windows, or whatever they call it. For now, zip it and follow me.”

“Facebook did exist before you left,” Ingrid said. “You know what a wall is.”

“I really wish I didn’t.”

They walked past the computers, to the area covered in plastic. Gently, Oliver lifted a corner, and they crept into the construction zone. In the corner, a tangle of sleek metal shelves were piled on top of each other. They were designed to entice undergraduates into reading periodicals but actually resembled something you might find on the deck of an alien spacecraft. Ingrid couldn’t imagine them holding
journals and magazines. Like the refurbished downtown campus—all concrete, glass, and succulent greenery kept alive by merciless heat—this project smacked of desperation. Most students would never pass by the computers in order to leaf through random journals. They were building a zoo for rare animals, each one slightly dazed to find itself on a shelf beneath track lighting.

“I’m the only one without armor,” Sam whispered. “That hardly seems fair.”

“Aren’t you an engineering student?” Carl made an abstract gesture. “Why not use these lovely materials to fashion yourself a cuirass?”

“I liked you better in the shit-stained tunica.”

They heard footsteps.

“Behind the shelves,” Oliver whispered.

There wasn’t enough room for all of them to hide in the same place. Carl, Shelby, and Oliver managed to fit behind the pile of half-assembled shelving. Ingrid and Sam crawled behind a hoard of wall brackets and other support structures. Ingrid was sweating beneath the chest protector. The sword no longer felt natural in her right hand. It was giving her a cramp.

Maybe it’s the firemen,
she thought, without conviction.
Won’t they be surprised to discover a group of crazy people, huddle
d together in an active construction zone?

Through gaps in the metal, she saw four pairs of shoes. Two sets of sneakers, one pair of boots, and—closest to her—sensible black orthotic shoes with extra cushioning. She’d recently thought of buying that exact pair from Zellers.

“This isn’t Robarts Library,” Mardian said. “They can’t have gone far. I’m willing to bet that they’re on this floor.”

“Waste of time,” an unfamiliar voice muttered.

The black shoes squeaked lightly as Mardian turned to face the voice. “You were bleeding to death when I found you in that hallway. If you’d like, we can re-create that scenario. There are plenty of sharp things lying around here.”

“I just don’t see why we’re playing hide-and-seek with these idiots. You know where they live. Why not just—”

“Stop talking.” Mardian turned toward the pile of metal. “They’re close. We need to flush them out.”

“We could burn the place down.”

“This is your school. You really wouldn’t hesitate to set it on fire?”

“My parents made me enroll. You think I wanted to major in kinesiology?”

Mardian sighed. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

Ingrid tightened her grip on the sword. Her brain was telling her to stay quiet. What surprised her was that she didn’t feel scared. Across from her, Sam was trying not to breathe. Her eyes were all pupil. For Ingrid, it was different. There was no shock of adrenaline. Her breathing stayed level as she kept absolutely still. Her body was used to this, even if it was the opposite of the Hippodrome. No pounding blood or tunnel vision. Just a bizarre kind of weightlessness. Dangling, a bat inside a cave lit only by flashes of mica. If she kicked over the hoard of metal, there would be a few seconds of anarchy. Long enough to strike before they knew what was happening.

But there was no way to signal Oliver. He was on the other side of the room. It would just be her, swinging her sword blindly. She looked at Sam, trying to gauge what the young woman might be capable of. Sam looked up. She was squeezing her hands together, and Ingrid could see that her knuckles were white. Not knowing what else to do, she winked. It was an odd gesture, and for a moment, Sam looked confused. Then, the hint of a smile played across her face. Some of the fear vanished. Maybe she’d fight after all. She’d been brave in the arx, when their odds had been much worse.