The Library of Forgotten Books (13 page)

“The city is beautiful from the square,” she said.

“Look at the smoke though, poisoning the air.”

“I grew up on the streets around those factories. I learned to love the dirty alleyways, the grime-covered walls.”

“Yes,” he said, “there’s energy in the new technologies. Many possibilities. Many choices.”

They sat in the afternoon sun, watching the painters around them try to capture the scene just so, in their very own ways, and talked. Aemilius had been born on Aya. Like all minotaurs he had burst forth from rock full of mighty rage, clamouring for knowledge and adventure. He had sailed on sleek longboats, travelled the deserts of Numeria, studied now-lost texts such as Sumi’s
Necromancy and Agency
in the ancient library of the sunken city.

Kata tried to keep the conversation focussed on Aemilius, but eventually he asked her about herself.

“My mother died of the contagion when I was a child,” she replied. “She had worked the factories for House Technis. I remember her hands were knobbly from the spinning wheels. When you held one, you could feel the calluses and where there had been breaks. But you know what the Cajiun philosophers say, ‘One must pass straight through pain—to attempt to avoid it is to warp your life, to cripple yourself.’”

“It intrigues me that you would know such philosophy. I thought it was out of fashion,” said Aemilius.

“It is, among the House philosophers. But many of the philosopher-assassins still contemplate it. Many who still live on the margins, or who, like me, grew up on the streets.”

He looked over at her curiously before taking her hand in his own rough fingers. “And you have raised yourself up. Look at you now: a real citizen of the city, free, capable.”

“Come,” she said, “let’s go.”

She took him back down the staircase, the wind picking up to buffet away their talk. And then down through the streets that grew in size, where children laughed and ran barefoot between houses and old men sat silently on stools by the front doors of their square, blocklike cottages.

Kata led him ultimately to her house. She took him inside and walked to the kitchen. She opened the cupboard door and glanced at the flagon. She left it there and walked back out of the kitchen. Aemilius stood before her, majestic. She reached out and placed her hand on his chest. It did not ripple with muscles as Cyriacus’ had, but his body was powerful nonetheless. Kata leaned in and rested her head against his chest, reaching up to touch his hairy face, the bristles wiry and oiled beneath her hand. The smell of sweat and perfume intoxicated her, and she felt calm as his arms closed in around her. She closed her eyes and felt his chest rising and falling beneath her cheek. Pushing back, she looked up into his onyx eyes, noticing for the first time the soft and dark eyelashes that interlaced beautifully as he blinked.

“Come upstairs,” she said.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I have to leave at the end of the week.”

“I don’t care. Come upstairs.” She turned and pulled him by the hand. He came, hesitantly, behind her, as if she were leading a child into the dark.

They lay the next morning in her bed, watching the light as it slowly shifted in intensity across the wall. In the afternoon, when he left to buy fruit from the markets, she locked the cupboard that held her bolt-thrower. When he returned, they ate the fruit naked at the table.

“Look at this,” he said, running his fingers along the roughened edge of the table that had been scraped when she’d killed Cyriacus.

“Scraped when I brought it through the door.”

“I hope you didn’t fall and give yourself those bruises,” he said.

“No. Those came from Cyriacus.”

“Ha!” He threw his head back.

“What?”

“I knew. I smelled his blood on the balcony. What happened?”

“We fought. I struck him and he left.”

“He left? Just like that? Don’t lie to me. I know what he tried to do. The young minotaurs, they let pain make their decisions for them.”

“It’s not what you think. He didn’t...”

“I’m sorry for whatever happened. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

She crossed her arms and clenched her teeth.

Aemilius reached over and placed his hand over hers. “You are distant.”

“To be close to someone is...dangerous.”

 After he left, Kata lay on the cushions and cried, cursing House Technis and their hold over her. She had volunteered so readily, a chance to cancel all her debts at once. But now...She had to kill another minotaur. It was sacrilege, of course, which was why they had agents like her do it.

She could not fail. She had two days.

Kata sat in the almost-barren room before a polished redwood desk. She looked out of the window to the hanging gardens with their red round fruit, their tinkling waterfalls and marble fountains. Soft purple flowers floated on the breeze. She smelled pollen and overripe fruit.

The door opened and Rudé entered. He sat in the red leather chair behind the desk. “Well?”

“I want to change the agreement.”

“We can’t. We have customers waiting for the different parts of the body. And the House’s thaumaturgists are waiting for the eyes, the liver and kidney, and the skin.”

“Perhaps you could get someone else to do it.”

“Yes. I suppose we could. But it’s a bit late now. Anyway, I’ve already given you an advance.”

“That was hardly worth the price of the first minotaur.”

“Yes, but let’s see. You still owe us for half the house. Now, we could repossess that...but you don’t want to go back on the street, do you? Anyway, look at it this way, Kata: it’s time for you to show some loyalty. Loyalty will get you far in this world.”

She rose to her feet and leaned over the desk at him. “Everyone finds their proper place, you know, Rudé. One day you’ll find yours.”

“Fine,” he said, as if Kata had not spoken at all. “I’ll come to collect the body at the end of the Festival tomorrow night. I trust you’ll be obliging.”

Kata met Aemilius in
La Tazia
, a tiny coffeehouse specializing in exotic fruits, nestled dangerously high on the south side of the cliffs where white houses and eateries piled upon each other like children’s blocks. The coffee there was dark and imported, the cigars rolled across the sea in Ambibia, and the owner a wasted old man called Pehzi who coughed up blackened phlegm between bouts of wheezy laughter. Nearing death, Pehzi found everything hilarious.

When Kata and Aemilius entered, Pehzi was talking to a fat philosopher-assassin with a shaved head and two bolt-throwers dangling from the back of his belt. Another couple played chess in one corner, their backs against the wall. Kata took Aemilius out onto the tiny, semicircular balcony where a small table allowed them to look over the city and the sea. Kata gazed at the peninsula with its steam baths and liquor palaces on the far side of the piers. She would not look at Aemilius.

“I shall not see you again,” she said.

“I see.”

Pehzi stepped out onto the balcony holding a tray. He placed the coffees on the table. “Waterberry pastries?”

“No.”

Pehzi nodded, laughed to himself about something, and left them alone.

Eventually Kata said, “You’re leaving the day after tomorrow. You’ll sail across the sea to Aya. That’s that.”

“I see.”

“Is that all you can say? ‘I see’? What about me? Why are you so...?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again and reached out to her. “You don’t have to feel alone.”

“Oh, but I do,” she said. “I do have to feel alone.”

 He lifted her up in both hands and held her close to him. She could hear his heart beating in his chest, and felt the warmth radiating into her cheek.

“Look over there,” he said. “Can you see how the colour of the sea changes as it passes over the sunken city? There are many who still lie on those marble streets, with skeletal horses and crumbling carriages around them. They are the only ones who should feel alone. But we—you and I—we are alive.”

“Come back with me,” she said. “Come back to my house and never leave. Never go to Aya.”

Later, when he was asleep in her bed, she watched as his eyes moved beneath their lids in sleep. Sometimes he groaned and half-lifted an arm, as if there was something to fend off in his dreams. She did not sleep that night, but lay awake thinking of how they would spend their last day together. And what she would tell Rudé.

Perhaps there was a chance to convince Aemilius to stay; they would not have to live in Caeli-Amur. They could escape the city and find somewhere quiet. But in her heart she knew it to be a dream, for he was a child of Aya. Yet she would struggle for it, just as she had for everything in her life.

In the morning she left him asleep and walked the streets alone. She wandered through the factory quarter, breathing the soot and grime that rose from those square gray buildings or from the chimneys that led from the underground factories.

When Kata returned to her house she found Aemilius and Rudé sitting at the table eating olives and melon. Three flagons of wine stood on the table before them. She stood in the doorway, aghast.

“We’ve brought sustenance,” said Aemilius.

“Ah,” said Rudé, “the woman of secrets returns. I must say, I expected I’d find a minotaur here, but I thought you might be here also.” Rudé grinned, his teeth red with wine.

Kata walked to the table and looked at the flagons. They were empty. “Yes,” said Aemilius, “I brought Anlusian hot-wine also.”

She breathed out.

“So,” said Rudé, rubbing his stomach gently. “We’ll have to find some more work for you, as you’ve clearly failed at your last task.”

“Are you in an enterprise together?” asked Aemilius, throwing a slice of green melon into his mouth.

Kata turned away from them and saw the empty cupboard.

“What’s the matter?” asked Aemilius.

Thinking the question was directed at him, Rudé, who was now looking white, said, “That hot-wine doesn’t agree with me. I think I need some air.”

“I’ll show you the balcony,” said Kata, leading him toward the stairs.

“I know where it is.”

“Even so.”

She led him up the stairs; he doubled over when he reached the balcony. “Oh,” he groaned. “That wine. The one we took from your cupboard, was it...”

Before he could finish speaking, Rudé dropped to his knees on the balcony and vomit came streaming and red from his mouth, dribbling down his shirt, onto the floor.

“The wine, did you drink it all?” she asked.

“We shared it,” he said. “Why?” He slumped onto his side.

“It was poisoned.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Help me.” Rudé fell forward onto his hands, breathing quickly and shallowly, drool coming in long lines from his mouth.

“No. There is nothing that can be done.”

“You bitch. You filthy...”

She leaned in over him: “You’re nothing, Rudé.”

“I fought to be where I am. Like you, I struggled.”

“No, you did exactly what the House wanted. You’re an appendage.”

Only a gurgle came from his white-frothed lips.

She ran back to the stairs, descended as quickly as she could, and found Aemilius standing by the table, steadying himself with one hand.

“No,” she said.

“What?”

She stood there, the room between them, looking at his massive presence.

“You,” he said. “You didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So it’s true, you murdered Cyriacus.” He staggered backward, unsteady on his feet. “I would have done...whatever I could. I would have...helped you.”

“You wouldn’t have. You would have left for Aya with the others. You would have sailed off, leaving me here, alone.”

There was froth around his mouth, and his magnificent eyes had lost their edge. They were clouded, as if a white substance were billowing into them.

He collapsed to the floor, his legs, once so powerful, at awkward angles beneath him. “I fought in the Numerian wars. I defended Caeli-Amur when Saliras’ fleet of a thousand ships appeared from the winter’s fog.”

She sat next to him. “It wasn’t meant to be this way. If only you hadn’t drunk the wine.”

He snarled, a sudden burst of energy lighting his face. “This is how the city repays me. There is no justice.”

She took his massive head in her lap and looked down on him. “I’m sorry.” She refused to cry.

He looked up at her, his words slurring as he spoke. “The New-Men will take this city, break it down and rebuild it. Then you’ll know what it’s like to be overtaken, to be...obsolete.” Finally he lost consciousness, dying quietly in her arms.

“You shall have to pay for Rudé’s death, you know,” said the new Officiate, another gray, middle-aged man with a cold, efficient manner. “There must be payment.”

She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sound of the saw as they cut up Aemilius. Still, she did not cry. In her heart she knew it was time to leave Caeli-Amur—she had struggled enough.

When the men from House Technis were gone, Kata stood on the balcony, watching over Caeli-Amur. She stood there, motionless. The night stars shone down over the water until dawn broke over the horizon and the sea changed from blue to green with little crests of white.

In the morning the minotaurs stepped their way down to the piers, one by one, their hulking bodies small against the ships. The citizens of the city watched them leave, these godlike creatures, powerful and mysterious. The children were solemn this time, knowing the minotaurs would not return for ten more years. And next time there would be fewer still. The elderly nodded their heads and said to each other: “So, they’re off again.” Others were unsure what to feel. When the last of the minotaurs embarked, the ships hoisted their sails and made their way over the sunken city and out to sea.

Lost in the Library of Forgotten Books

East of the twelve towers that stand in the centre of Varenis, and past the bustling boulevards filled with rickshaws and steam trams, the apartment buildings huddle close to each other, pressed together like vagrants in the cold. Hidden between them lies The Library of Forgotten Books, its walls grey from soot and smoke. Little minarets circle its dome, and the gloomy light barely filters through the blue and red stained glass windows. It stands like a symbol for its contents, almost forgotten except in certain critical administrative centres and among particular writers who shudder at its thought and close their eyes as they write during the long nights.

That particular morning, in the middle of one of Varenis’ hot summers, I watched Mr Agee pass through the imposing entrance hall with its massive pillars and into the foyer where I worked with the head librarian, Mr Treskoti. Fat and sweating and already crying, Agee carried his pile of books in both arms. He dropped one, leaned down to try to pick it up, and another three fell to the polished marble floor. One landed face down and open, some of its pages crumpling beneath its weight. He looked up at us savagely, as if we were to blame. I took a step forward, yearning to help him, but stopped myself.

“Damn you,” Agee said.

“Mr Agee,” said Treskoti, “Don’t make a scene.”

“I don’t understand,” said Agee to himself.

“Oh, you understand perfectly well,” said Treskoti. “Your books have been classified as aesthetically bereft, as...unreadable. They have been placed on the list of the forgotten, and are now to be catalogued in line with the requirements of the Directorate of Publications. I trust these are the only copies that you possess.”

Agee’s face shuddered and he took a step forward. “Just because a book is unread doesn’t mean it’s not great.”

Treskoti shook his head in mock-disappointment. “The Directorate is the will of the people. The people say that your aesthetic is dangerously degenerate.”

Agee dropped the rest of the books on the floor in disgust. He turned and walked towards the exit, his fat body lurching from side to side, his flesh moving around his bones as his internal equilibrium shifted. After about twenty paces he turned back. His face was red with anger, and yet there were still tears in his eyes. “Everyone gets what’s coming to them,” he said.

Unperturbed, Treskoti observed Agee from beneath his bushy brows. “Why can’t they all be like Mr Ister? Anyway, catalogue these then will you, Alisa, before he arrives?”

I tried to smooth out the crumpled pages. I hated to see them damaged. One day I hoped to stop floating through life like a balloon in the wind and start my own publishing house. But the best work I could find was in the Library, spending my days surrounded by books that were not to be read, and my nights in the bars and cafés surrounded by facile friends who laughed and drank and planned great ventures that never came to fruition.

At least I could take care of Agee’s books. I ensured my pendant—round and inscribed with its complex ideograms—was around my neck, and headed into the dark places of the library with the books under my arm, ready to be stamped, shelved, and forgotten.

The hundred and more staircases in the huge domed reading room led, criss-crossing like a mad spider’s web, from level to level and into the darkness. I took the small spiral one, its sides adorned with iron minotaurs and sirens, sea serpents and xsanthians. Through the lacework the library’s marble floors disappeared below. The library had grown like an out of control organism, sections added on over the centuries without thought. Now it was a composite of styles and designs, of nooks and crannies, secret reading rooms, stairs that led nowhere, grottos that could only be reached by ladders.

When I reached the upper level, Mrs Emmago’s head popped out from one of the aisles in front of me, her face plump and filled with narrow-minded curiosity. I jumped. “Where are you off to?”

“Memoir: Agee.”

“Agee.” She nodded. “That pathetic fat man.” She scrunched up her unnaturally smooth face and said malevolently, “Be careful of the Guardians.” It was a joke the librarians whispered to each other, laughing without conviction. But with Mrs Emmago there was an edge of cruelty, a touch of pleasure. It was no wonder that despite working in the library her whole life and knowing every shelf and stair, she’d never been promoted. A cold gust of air brushed across me and the fine hair on my arms and neck stood on end. I looked around but could see nothing.

I passed between the labyrinthine shelves with their numbers: 14629—1333—CE Xbuta. And then 14629—1333—CE Xbute. And on and on. I climbed staircases higher still, onto ramshackle wooden stairs which gave way to ladders: up, up, between the ledges littered with unshelved books in cluttered piles. Each of the platforms became smaller, held up by dangerous-looking wooden supports, until I found the right place, the platform barely a shelf itself, the drop precipitous behind me, my legs trembling now.

As I reached up to shelve Agee’s books a voice hissed in my ear. “Ah, another one to be forgotten.” The sound warped in and out of existence; at one moment it seemed to be spoken directly into my ears, and a fraction later as if from down a long corridor. The words bent and warped under the pressure of the Other Side.

I let out a little cry and teetered on my feet. Cold rushes ran up along my back and my breath quickened. I caught a glimpse of too-large teeth and bared lips like those of a dead horse. They warped and twisted, as if melting, and then faded into the black formlessness.

“Oh, don’t fall little one. Oh, we wouldn’t want that.”

I shelved the books, ignoring the dark roiling stain of the Guardian beside me, and took a step towards the ladder.

“Go down backwards little one, it’s much safer.”

My legs shaking uncontrollably, I tried to place a foot onto the ladder. My foot struck the step and I pulled it back and tried again.

I managed to get one foot onto the ladder and then the other one.

“Come on, come down,” said the Guardian, now on the platform below me.

When I reached the lower ledge, I felt the Guardian’s unnatural and cold air emerging from the Other Side.

Down the staircases I climbed, the Guardian flittering behind me until it sighed in its inhuman voice, “Alisa, Alisa, I’ll be waiting for you, little one.”

In the foyer, Mr Ister stood calmly in front of the counter, his head craning naturally forward, his hair dark cropped like a helmet. His skin was olive and he held himself calmly, radiating self-reliance.

“Ah, you’re so prolific, Mr Ister,” said Treskoti, recording the deposits in the massive log-book.

At this Mr Ister smiled, looking almost embarrassed, his eyes lowered. “One does what one can.” He turned and looked at me curiously, as if I were a far away object on the horizon that he couldn’t quite make out. I stared back at him, feeling like a small animal before a larger one, mesmerised. We stood there, looking at each other for what seemed an eternity, as if some emotional wire hung between us. Then he turned, tall and dark, and walked out through the entrance hall.

“So polite,” said Treskoti and he pushed the books towards me. “These are for the Politicals,” he said.

“The Labyrinth?” I asked.

“The Labyrinth,” he replied.

I walked through Palasin’s Hall and down the wide staircase to the Labyrinth. The corridors were lined with strange implements, tools or weapons—intricate metal constructions. Strange gas-less lights were spaced along the roof. In little alcoves stood statues of men and women, looking on balefully in the gloom, the great forgotten writers and philosophers, thaumaturgists and politicians—the authors of the magnificent works held in the library.

Those corridors wound and curled around themselves, overlapping like a tangled piece of string. The entire thing was built by thaumaturgy, so that the angles of the passageways could not possibly add up. No map could be made of the labyrinth, for there was no direction. I had memorised the paths I was allowed to follow. The other rooms and corridors were prohibited to lowly librarians like me.

Alcove after alcove I passed, into the darkness. The roof was lined with pipes and cords and wires, their ends torn and ragged. A soft breath of air fluttered for a moment by my cheek. I looked back along the dark corridor. Somewhere in the darkness there was a flittering presence. Another cold gust of air. Leaning against the wall, my breath fast, my heart like a lizard trapped in a pair of hands, I let out a soft whimper.

“Hello, pretty.” The voice warped in and out of existence.

I ran.

“Don’t run little one.”

I fled along a memorized path, through to the first vast hall that housed the ancient morality plays. I turned past the MA-16655-U section, and towards the left-hand wall, through a corridor, round corners, past circular rooms, into the smaller passages where the labyrinth was older, its walls no longer plastered but bare rock, the wires and pipes gone. Turning quickly to my right, I came to a
cul
de sac
where no
cul
de sac
should have been.

Trembling, I slipped behind a wall hanging at the
cul
de sac’s
end. My breath loud in my ears, I fell backwards into utter blackness. Throwing out my hand, I struck a lever. The floor shuddered and shifted. The movement changed from upwards to sidewards and then the floor shook to a halt. A door opened behind me and light poured into the elevator in which I now realised I lay. Revealed was a small round room lit by a line of purple and yellow glowing beads. But this was not like the other rooms in the Labyrinth. It was warmer, with rugs and hangings and couches along one wall and a small table before them. A deep red reading chair stood invitingly beside the table. Still clasping Ister’s books, I entered the room in wonder, examining the tall wooden bookcases filled with all kinds of books: tall ones and short ones, thick ones with silvery leather, thin ones bound by wicker spines. A desk with paper and quill stood against one wall and a large double-door was closed on the far wall.

I sat for a moment in the chair and I placed Ister’s books on the table. Could I retrace my steps? Afraid of beginning the search though the labyrinth, I simply sat there, paralysed, as I had been so often in my life, by the consequences of acting. And so, repressing the seriousness of my situation, I picked up one of Ister’s books, called
The Mechanical Men
, and began to read.

It told the story of a strange city that climbed high in the sky like a great metal mountain—all pipes and pylons, wires and tubes. A young man called Bikrim was restless. His unhappiness was unfathomable, his restlessness unnameable, his anger quick and without point. He kept these feelings deep inside, like lava beneath a mountain, threatening to erupt. It was a world powered not by steam and coal, but by a flammable molten metal, cold to touch, that ran in the mountains close to the city. By day Bikrim worked on the great pipes that carried the molten metal to the city, to fuel its flying and tunnelling machines, by night he sought out the dark spots of the city, where the lowlifes and the artists congregated, smoking and injecting drugs that allowed them to travel back in time and relive a lost age before the city was dominated by its thirst for the liquid metal, before its relentless growth, ever higher into the air, an endlessly growing burrow, a metal cancer.

The vividness of his writing brought me into what they call
larev
in Caeli-Amur, that dreamlike state where you somehow become one with the story, where all other things in the world drop away, where you exist in that imagined world. For a while I
was
Bikrim, that slender dark-skinned man. This feeling become so palpable, that as he wandered along the dark metal pathways, I could
feel
his body, the wiry strength in his limbs, I could
smell
the city’s dirty smoke and fumes, I was filled with restlessness and passion. I had always slipped easily into such reverie, but Ister’s writing seemed more powerful than the other fictions I had read. It was as if I was connected to it, just as Ister and I had fixed each other earlier with our eyes.

I emerged from that book shaken and walked back into the elevator. The lighting beads had long ago been broken inside it. With trepidation I pushed the lever. As the doors shuddered to a close, I caught a last glimpse of Ister’s books on the table, and the one I had placed there only moments before. I took a step forward, but it was too late—I was enveloped in darkness. It didn’t matter. The books were lost anyway.

The elevator stopped. At the entrance to the
cul
de sac
the corridor led away in both directions. The memorized path—the one I had thought I had followed—was clear in my mind. Hoping that I had simply followed those turns but along the wrong corridors, I made my way back, but before long I came to a crossroads where one path led up and curled out of sight, another plunged downwards like some terrifying slide, another ended in steps. It was unfamiliar to me.

I walked up the stairs but before long the passage descended, twisting like a spring. How long I passed along those tunnels I couldn’t say, but I became delirious with fear and the lack of sensory stimulation. I was hungry and thirsty. My soft-shoed feet were quiet, but little strange noises echoed, magnified by the winding corridors. Can anything compare to the loneliness of being lost? It is as if you have woken up and found that everyone has left the world but you.

When I stumbled onto an underground stream, the sound of the water tinkling on the rocks, I collapsed and cried. I cursed myself—all the years when I had attended the modish parties in the Kinarian Pocket, drinking kuyu juice with friends, forever holding everyone at arm’s length with laughter or a witticism. I cried for lost intimacy. I was now as alone as I had hoped to keep myself, and it was not what I wanted.

“Oh little one, it’s not that bad you know. You at least will die a true death.”