The Reader (20 page)

L
on stood by the glass wall of the Library, looking out over the mountains. Gray fingers of moonlight parted the clouds, touching on blue ridges and black trees dusted with snow. Taking a deep breath, he blinked, allowing the Illuminated world to swim before his eyes.

Under the blanket of winter white, the boulders and trees glimmered with golden threads of light, swirling and shifting with the passage of time.

He watched the growth of the trees and felt wildfires burning across the landscape, experienced lightning strikes on the granite domes, and suffered the slow inevitable advancement of glacial ice. Entire lifetimes revolved before him while he stood there, dimly aware of the passing minutes, his breath fanning against the glass.

Erastis had always said he would need a referent, something in the physical world to anchor him in the seas of light that
spanned all of history. But Lon was better than that. It had taken him months of training, but now he could absorb decades of information without falling ill or losing himself in the waves of light.

“I thought I'd find you here.”

Lon blinked, and the Illuminated world drained away. He turned to find the Second standing beside him, smelling of metal. She was dressed in her black Assassin's garb, with frost still clinging to her dark hair. Her curved sword hung at her side.

“You're back,” he said. Even though he spoke softly, his voice still echoed faintly in the marble hall.

The Second didn't look at him, but she nodded. There was something different about her now. After their encounter in the Library, they'd spent six months becoming friends—as she forged her bloodsword and he trained in the Sight—and then one day, over five weeks ago, she and her Master had disappeared. No one would say where they'd gone, and Erastis, when pressed, had only shaken his head and said, “I told you not to get too attached to her, Lon. Assassins don't form ties they can't break.”

And now, she seemed almost as distant as she had the day they'd met.

“Where did you go?” he asked.

“I was on another mission.” Her words were a thread of condensation, fading quickly against the glass.

“Oh.”

For a whole minute, nothing moved but the snowflakes outside.

“How long are you going to be back?”

“As long as I'm ordered to.”

“Oh.” Lon watched her intently. She'd been on missions before she'd gotten her bloodsword, before they became friends. But he didn't remember her coming back like this, cold and remote as the frigid Northern Reach.

The Second slid her sword a hand-span out of its sheath, her gaze passing over the copper-colored steel, which had been inscribed with hundreds of words, swooping up and along the blade in perfect spirals. After forging the blade, she had spent another three months using Transformation to engrave the weapon, imbuing it with its magical properties. In the moonlight, the letters seemed to glow.

He tugged awkwardly at his huge sleeves. He didn't like thinking about it, but Apprentices were assigned to their divisions for a reason. At eighteen, the Second had already had at least a dozen missions, each one of them a kill, and as she grew more powerful, she would begin operating on her own, separate from the First, doubling their deadly reach. One day, Rajar, his bighearted, bigmouthed best friend, would hold the lives of hundreds of soldiers in his hands. The Apprentice Administrator, who was almost as old as her dying Master, had been chosen long ago for her aptitude for poisons and torture.

Lon was still anxious to prove himself, but he no longer envied his fellow Apprentices.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked quietly.

The Second hesitated a long moment before sliding her sword back into its scabbard with a definitive
click
. “What were you doing in here?”

He swallowed. “Watching the glaciers.”

There was a flicker of their old friendship in her eyes. “You must have improved since I saw you last.”

He shrugged. “I still can't see the future, though.”

“Only one seer in a thousand can see the future.”

“That's what Erastis says too.” Lon slowed his voice and clipped his words in imitation of the Master Librarian. “‘It takes a rare talent to see the stories yet to be told, my Apprentice. How can you see them when you don't know what they will be?'” He rolled his eyes. “But that doesn't mean I can't try.”

The Second raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you'll want to teleport to the future too, in a few years.”

“Why not?”

“Because
that
has never been done.”

“That doesn't mean it can't be done.”

A light bloomed in the corridor at the other end of the Library, and the Second grabbed his hand, pulling him to the glass doors of the greenhouse and into the warm soil-scented air inside.

Easing the door closed again, she crouched with him behind an array of papery poppies as they watched Erastis enter the Library, an oil lantern dangling from his hand. He claimed it was a waste of power to use the electric lamps just for him.

Lon grimaced. “I thought he'd be asleep for longer tonight.”

“Shh.”

At night, the Master Librarian wore the same long velvet robes he wore during the day, and they swished and slithered across the floor as he ascended the steps to one of the alcoves.
The lamplight wavered as he disappeared behind the bookshelves.

“He scolds me for sneaking in here at night, but he brings
lanterns
to the stacks,” Lon grumbled.

“He's in charge of the Library. He makes the rules.”

“But I'll be the Master Librarian one day. And I won't burn it down then either.”

Erastis emerged from the shelves carrying a red-bound volume under his arm. He padded out of the Library again, the light batting at the ceiling as he withdrew down the hall.

“You're lucky to be a Librarian. The rest of us”—the Second paused for a moment; her mouth twisted, and the rest of the sentence seemed to change direction abruptly—“can't come in here and take whatever we want. Not even the Director can do that.”

Lon's powers of observation, honed during his time as a street performer, told him something was wrong. That her latest mission had been different, had shaken her somehow, so that the pieces of her had been dislodged and were now rattling around inside her. But he didn't dare ask about it again. Instead he said, “Neither can I.”

“But you will someday.” She smiled sadly, but he knew from the pain in her eyes that her sadness was not for him.

When he didn't say anything, she clasped her hands around her knees and looked up at the sky through the glass ceiling. There, between the clouds, they could see the constellations—each set of stars a story, spelled out in needlepoints of light and the imaginary threads that connected them.

“Do you know the story of the great whale?” the Second asked.

Lon nodded. “When I was a kid, and my parents tucked me in at night, they used to tell me all sorts of stories about the moon and the stars and the shapes of the trees. When they were home, at least. Before their troupe was called off again to who-knows-where.”

“Tell it to me.” Her voice shivered, like a ripple in the still surface of a lake.

He looked at her for a moment, but she wouldn't meet his gaze. So he found the stars that formed the shape of the whale, inhaled the deep scent of earth that surrounded him, and began, his voice falling easily into the cadence of the old stories.

“Once there was, and one day there will be. This is the beginning of every story.

“Once there was a great whale, as large as an island kingdom and as black as the night itself. Every day, the whale would swim across the oceans and rise up out of the sea at sunset, making a great leap into the sky with drops of water still clinging to its skin. All through the night it swam across the sky, and when dawn came, the whale dove into the sea again to repeat the cycle: through the water by day, through the sky by night.

“At that time there was a famous whaler whose name has been forgotten, though his deeds have not. He had killed more whales than any man who ever lived or has lived since. They said his ship was made of whale bones and he drank from cups of whale teeth. Every night, he watched the great whale swim through the sky, and he knew that no matter how many ordinary
whales he killed, he would never be the greatest whaleman until he had killed this one.

“It took many long years of preparation, but eventually he was ready. At dawn, when the sparkling black whale dove back into the sea, the whaleman released his harpoons. The great whale was caught! But it was so strong that it kept swimming. All day it swam across Kelanna, pulling the little whaler behind it.

“As night approached, the whaler prepared his ship for flight. But as the whale leapt into the sky, the lines snapped. The ship slammed back into the water. Many men were cast overboard and lost in the dark seas. But the whaler would not be stopped. He and his remaining crew sailed the ship into the air . . . but it was too late. The great whale was already halfway across the sky, and though the whaleman pursued his quarry through what remained of the night, the sun caught up to him, and he and his ship disappeared into the light.

“The next night, a new set of stars appeared: it was the whaler, doomed to chase after his quarry for the rest of time. And the great whale swam freely through the ocean and the sky, untroubled by men.”

As Lon finished his story, the Second's hands drifted to her bloodsword, and the scent of metal bloomed in the greenhouse.

“Your parents told you this?” she murmured.

“Didn't yours?”

Her gaze fastened on him. “I have no parents,” she said.

“Right. ‘I shall forsake all ties to kin and kingdom.'” Lon rattled off the words of their oath. “But you
had
parents, at one time anyway.”

As her fingers tightened on her scabbard, he could see the scars and nicks on her skin shifting over her tendons.

Finally she released her grip on the sword. Her shoulders drooped and she hugged her knees to her chest. “Will you tell me another?” she asked.

For a moment, Lon studied her. She had closed her eyes, and the blue-gray light edged her forehead, her lashes, her nose and lips. He'd never seen anyone look so vulnerable and so impenetrable at the same time.

“Do you know the story of the bear man who split the Gorman Islands?” he asked.

Almost imperceptibly, the Second shook her head.

Leaning back on his hands, Lon stared up at the sky. “Once there was, and one day there will be . . .” he began.

He told her story after story, skipping them one by one like stones into the darkness, where they disappeared without a splash. She didn't say anything about her mission, and he didn't ask again, but they spent the rest of the night in the greenhouse, until the sky lightened and the smell of green and growing things overpowered the scent of blood and iron.

S
efia didn't know how much time had passed since Archer had fallen asleep, but judging from the way the sounds of the ship had gradually faded—the voices, the footsteps, the sudden unfurling of sails like turning pages—it was night by the time Archer stirred.

He woke as quietly as he did everything else, with the barest twitching of his fingertips. She felt him sit up.

“We have enough food and water for three days, if we're careful about it.” She began feeling along the edges of the box. “We need to find a way out.”

After a little pushing and prodding, one side of the crate cracked open. Fresh air came streaming through the opening and they breathed deep, happy breaths. Their relief lasted only a moment, however, because as they shoved harder against the wall, it jammed and wouldn't open farther.

Archer slammed his shoulder into it, pushed, feet and hands
and body. Sefia crawled out of his way. He flung himself at the walls, fists and head and legs. The crate seemed to shrink around them. The imaginary smells of blood and urine, old straw and fouled floors enveloped them.

“Archer, please!”

He ignored her. He shoved his whole weight against the side of the crate. She could feel his panic as palpable as sweat.

Then, with a scraping noise, the wall gave way. Archer wriggled out into the hold at the bottom of the ship. He crouched there for a long moment in the semidarkness, listening. Sefia held her breath.

But there were no signs that anyone had heard—no sound of the watch, no footsteps.

Soon Sefia crawled out and stretched her legs. The rest of the hold was stocked with crates, barrels, burlap sacks. Archer inspected the hatchway that led to the lower deck above them, but there were no signs of movement.

Near the fore of the hold, Sefia picked the lock to the galley store and found potatoes, salted beef, carrots, hard cheeses wrapped in cloth, butter, suet, eggs, and in the corner, an unlit lantern with a cracked glass globe.

She blinked, and the history of the lantern swam before her eyes: the rough seas when it broke, where it had come from, images so quick and confused that she couldn't focus on them. Nausea washed over her and she stumbled, banging the backs of her legs on a nearby crate.

Why did her vision work sometimes but not others? Shaking her head, she blinked and tried again, but still she found herself floundering in the sea of hands, faces, glimpses of dark places.
Her vision leapt from the past to the future: she saw herself lighting the lantern, the shadows of Archer's face, and then she was slipping through history to a glassblower's workshop, with the heat on her face, watching globes of glass spin on iron rods like enormous globs of crystal taffy.

Then she blinked and returned to the present, where Archer stood in front of her, a smile lighting up his eyes. Sefia's stomach flipped, and not just because of the nausea. How long had he been watching her? What did she look like? She almost laughed, and nervously clamped her hand over her mouth to silence herself.

Archer's smile widened.

Busying herself until the heat in her cheeks subsided, she collected the lantern and rummaged around until she found oil to light it. Then she and Archer retreated silently back to the crate.

Over the course of the next few days, they ate their own food first, but when their stores ran out, they started stealing, always taking a little less than they needed: half a handful of peas, a scoop of water, a small wedge of pork. They were always hungry. Their stomachs grumbled. But they couldn't afford to be full.

They learned to recognize night from day by the way the sounds of the ship faded away, keeping time by the sudden eruptions of noise at the changing of the watch, and only came out after the rest of the ship had gone to sleep—just a few minutes to stretch and gather supplies.

Once they were sneaking crumbs of cheese when footsteps
sounded on the deck above. They ducked behind the nearest crate as lantern light flooded the dark hold. There was a sound of rats scurrying away into the corners.

A long shadow crossed the hold to the galley store, where the ship's boy unlocked the door and began poking among the barrels, a silhouette of long limbs and curls on the curving timbers. “Butter,” he said. “Butter, butter, butter. I'll never get used to it. We oughta get a cow and make our own, at the rate he's usin' it.” He found it bundled in the corner of the hold, took a hunk, and stomped back up the stairs, still grumbling under his breath.

They didn't take any butter after that.

It turned out that trips to the hold were fairly regular, occurring a few hours before each meal, with only occasional unexpected visits, and Sefia and Archer grew accustomed to the boy's comings, goings, and mutterings.

They slept during the day, curled up next to each other, waking only at the sounds of footsteps above, holding still and barely breathing, until the footsteps faded and they were alone again.

In the hours they spent awake, through the darkest, safest hours of the night, Sefia practiced using her vision. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes she saw old Delienean pastures, rolling green hills with black-and-white cows grazing in the shadow of Kozorai Peak, where overgrown trenches and stone walls served as reminders of a siege that had occurred hundreds of years before, in the heat of the Ken-Alissar blood feud. Sometimes she saw rough hands picking apart ropes and twining them together
again, with salt in the air and a breeze in the sails. But every moment of seeing brought headache and vertigo and nausea, and she couldn't maintain her vision for long.

Other times, when she deemed it was safe enough, she lit the lantern inside their little crate. Archer leaned in close, the light playing across his chin, his cheekbones, his golden eyes. And she read. Her voice surrounded them with stories, until they were saturated with the world inside the book, breathing it in, hearing not the creaking of their own ship but that of the one in the story, the one with the green hull, sailing for the western edge of the world.