Had the Red Codex marked him because it was choosing him? Had it made him a librarian? He still couldn’t remember what the Codex had been about; he only knew that it’d had a red leather cover, and that he’d been completely absorbed in it, until the words had crawled out, over his hand, and around his wrist.
It had not been one of the marked books—there had been no symbol burned into its cover. At least, not that he remembered. It had attacked Jeffen and Franciss, so it had been dangerous. Possibly, as his former master, Merwyn Farnsworth, had said, it had been the codex. Whatever that meant.
Did the Red Codex that had marked him have anything to do with what was going on in the royal library?
Oh, blast. It must have. He just didn’t know what. He pulled the coat sleeve down to cover the letters. With a sigh, he rubbed his eyes. There was way too much that he didn’t know.
Then he heard the outer door of the library open and slam. He came out into the main room to see Charleren—good, right on time, Alex thought—but then he realized that the prince wasn’t alone. His sister was with him.
Queen Kenneret stood in the watery gray light that trickled in through the high windows, gazing around the room. She wore a different kind of clothes, he realized. A dress that looked more simple, more comfortable, more warm. It didn’t make her look any less queenly.
Seeing the library through her eyes, Alex felt himself cringe a little. Both of the long reading tables were covered with stacks of books, papers, dirty teacups, nubs of pencils, lengths of heavy chain and rusty padlocks, bottles of ink half used up, and the various presents that his pages kept bringing him, things like a tiny box of headache pills, a jeweled ring that he’d been meaning to return to the queen, and a selection of knitted woolly items like mittens and more hats and scarves. He’d shifted some of the clutter onto the floor to make room for his map, which took up half of one table. The map wasn’t just one paper, but lots of them clipped together as he added to it, because the library was bigger and more sprawling than he’d realized.
The tables weren’t even the worst of it. The cards from the catalog were strewn everywhere. Books were piled everywhere else. Half of the shelves were empty—the books kept sneaking off and hiding.
The queen put her hands on her hips. She did not look happy. Charleren stood beside her, his face blank. His nose was swollen up like a strawberry from their fight the day before.
“My uncle was right,” the queen said sharply. “This is a disaster.”
Alex felt all of his frustration, and weariness, and his annoyance that the library was still unheated, and the knowledge that Lord Patch seemed to have free access to it, and the fact that another librarian was dead and he had no idea what the L.B.s were, and his constant, nagging awareness that the books were afraid and he couldn’t do much to protect them, and, yes, the fright of his close encounter with The Human Heart book—all of it hit him at the same time, so when he answered her, he wasn’t at his most polite.
“What do you even know about it?” he snarled, and flung himself into a chair at the table.
“As much as you do, apparently,” Kenneret answered. Her tone was frosty.
Alex gave her a sour look. “I am a librarian,” he said. “For one more day, anyway.”
“No,” she said sharply. “You are not. You never were.”
Alex sat up as shock flashed through him. “You’re dismissing me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then you’re an idiot,” he said bitterly, getting to his feet again so he could pace. “Your Majesty,” he added, making the words drip with acid. “This”—he waved his arm, meaning the whole library—“is a disaster.”
“That is what we just said.” The queen was a lot shorter than he was, but somehow she managed to look down her nose at him, all snooty. “And you are out of line.”
Her brother snorted, as if to say So out of line. And Alex knew it, he knew he was being disrespectful, but couldn’t she see that the library was too important for politeness?
“We,” the queen went on, “have seen a letter from Duchess Purslane.”
Oh, blast. Alex sat down again with a thump.
“Can you guess what it says?” Kenneret asked, her voice edged.
Alex folded his arms on the table and rested his head on them. “Yes,” he answered, his voice muffled. It was too much, after the night he’d had. He lifted his head again and rubbed his eyes. “The duchess said . . .” He considered it. “She said that Merwyn Farnsworth had an apprentice . . . no, a servant, probably, who is no librarian and who tried to destroy the papers in her library.” He glanced up at her. She was frowning. “That’s about the sum of it, I’m guessing.”
“Not quite,” she said. She held up the letter—he hadn’t noticed that she was carrying it. Unfolding it, she read.
. . . the boy is a liar and a forger of letters.
She glanced at him.
Alex shrugged. It was essentially true.
He wanted to destroy my library.
Only sort of true, but explaining it wasn’t going to help.
After a moment, the queen went on.
The boy was after Merwyn Farnsworth’s job. I would not be at all surprised to discover that he was responsible for the librarian’s death, perhaps even intentionally caused it.
“What?” Alex shook his head. “No! That part of it is wrong.”
“Only that part?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But you already knew that.”
“Charlie, throw him out.”
Alex gave him a look that said Just try. “No,” he said, and as Kenneret turned to leave he jumped to his feet and grabbed her arm.
“Careful,” Charlie said warningly.
“Listen,” Alex said, getting desperate. “You can’t—I know it looks bad, but I do know what I’m doing.” Mostly. “What if I can prove that there are dangerous books here in the library?”
Kenneret straightened and looked down at his hand, which was still on her arm. Quickly he snatched it away. Then she looked him over, from head to toe, and even though he was a good five inches taller than she was, she made him feel small and grubby. She was such a queen. “How do you do it?” she asked musingly.
“Do what?” he said.
“I never gave the library a single thought before you came. Somehow you make it seem like the most important thing in the world.”
“Because it is—” he started.
“I’m missing a meeting right now with the trade minister. My uncle will be so disappointed in me. Why am I even here?” she asked herself. With a shake of her head, as if she was waking herself up, she turned away and started for the door.
For a second, Alex felt like his feet were too heavy to move, because he knew this was it, he was done here. Then he went after her. “Wait.” As she reached the door, he slid in front of her, blocking her way. “Kenneret, just listen,” he said hurriedly. “This is important, hugely important, and it does want your attention. The library’s been neglected for far too long, and if you let it go any farther, there will be trouble.”
She stood there looking up at him, with her brother looming at her back.
With a cold feeling in his stomach, he realized that he’d just called her by her first name, instead of Your Majesty.
A line of a frown gathered between her eyebrows. “What happened to your face?” she asked after a long moment.
“A book,” he answered.
“It gave you a paper cut?” Charleren put in.
“No,” Alex said, giving him a glare that said Stay out of it. Then he changed his tone. “Actually, yes. It attacked me.” He turned his attention back to the queen. “And I can prove it. Will you come and see?”
For a moment she wavered. Then she glanced over his head. He didn’t know what she saw, but it made her give a decisive nod. “All right, Alex. Show me. But if this is a lie, you really will be dismissed. The guards will throw you out of here so fast, your head will spin.”
16
“Why is it so cold in here?” Kenneret asked, as Alex led her and Charlie across the cluttered main room of the library.
“You tell me,” she thought she heard Alex mutter.
He stalked ahead of them, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, looking typically annoyed, but not very typically weary, as if he hadn’t slept in days. He was wearing a sheathed sword. He couldn’t see them, but a swarm of pages followed him, hovering almost protectively right behind his back. She knew about librarians’ pages, of course, but she’d always thought they had one or two, not twenty or thirty, as Alex had. With that many pages at his service, he had to be a librarian, despite what Uncle Patch had said about him. Didn’t he? She wanted to believe that he was.
The first thing that morning, while she’d been eating toast and tea for breakfast, her uncle had joined her.
“Kenneret,” he said, his voice serious, pulling up a chair at the table, “I have received most disturbing news.” And then he’d given her the letter from Duchess Purslane. As Kenneret scanned the letter, she felt a cold heaviness in her chest. She had met the duchess before; the woman was obsessed with roses and her family history, she recalled, and was solid and law-abiding, one of the old nobility. She wouldn’t invent the terrible things she had written about Alex. So they had to be true.
She didn’t want them to be true. She’d read through the letter again, and set it on the table. Carefully she picked up her cup and took a sip of tea. Then she set it down and took a neat bite of toast.
“So you see, my dear,” her uncle had said, “the boy is not a librarian at all, but a thief, a liar, and possibly a murderer. Really, he ought to be imprisoned and sent back to Purslane to face punishment for his crimes. I don’t want to worry you with this. I will see to it that guards are sent to the library to arrest him.”
For just a moment, Kenneret had felt relief. Yes. Uncle Patch could take care of it. She didn’t need to worry. The library wasn’t that important anyway. She took another bite of toast. Then she scolded herself. She was queen. It shouldn’t be easy; she did need to worry.
“I will see to dismissing the royal librarian,” she’d said to her uncle.
For just a fraction of a second, the briefest loss of control, an expression flashed across his face. Almost a snarl.
And then he was all bland smiles again. “Of course, Kennie. You do what you feel you must.”
She had brought a set of four guards with her. They were waiting outside the library door. All she had to do was call them.
“Up here,” Alex said, starting up a spiral staircase that led them past the first two levels of books to the third level. “Light-wells,” he muttered, and two of his pages swooped away, then reappeared a moment later carrying lights, which they held, floating ahead of them down a narrow corridor lined with bookshelves. Stolen light-wells, Kenneret reminded herself.
They reached a door, one that looked heavy and solid.
Alex reached into his coat pocket. In the wavery light, she saw him go pale, paler than he already was.
“Blast it,” she heard him whisper.
“What?” she whispered back.
“Key’s already in the lock,” he said in a normal voice, and pointed, and she saw that yes, one of the padlocks that secured the door had a key in it.
“So you left it there?” she asked, not sure what was going on.
“No.” He shook his head. “I put it in my pocket.” He turned his intense stare on her. “I’m very careful with the key to this particular room. It shouldn’t be here.” He turned to the door again. “But it is. They want to escape.”
“The books do?” Charlie put in from behind her. Alex shot him a scornful look, and Charlie squirmed a bit. “I was only asking,” he protested.
Opening both padlocks, Alex pushed open the heavy door. The two pages holding light-wells floated into the room before them. It was made all of stone, with a low ceiling and just a few shelves.
“See?” Alex said, pointing. “Dangerous.”
Five books were there, wrapped in chains or stuffed into locked metal boxes, all chained to the shelves. “I see,” Kenneret said slowly, “that you have secured all of these books.”
“They’re not doing anything,” Charlie said.
Alex glared at the books. “No,” he muttered after a few silent moments had passed. “They’re not.”
They sat there, like every book Kenneret had ever seen, gathering dust. She was starting to wonder if maybe Alex was crazy. Did he think the books moved around? Did he really believe a book—a book!—had attacked him and given him the nasty cut on his face? Or that the books had somehow stolen the key to this room and were actively trying to escape? It was crazy! And if he was that crazy, maybe he really had killed old Merwyn Farnsworth.
And here she was, the queen, in a small room with him, with only her brother, who Alex, she suspected, could probably take apart with his little finger. And he was wearing a sword. The guards were outside the library’s main door, but it would take them too long to get up here even if they could hear her shout for them.
She felt a frisson of fear creep up the back of her neck.
“This . . .” Alex said, his voice wavering. “This isn’t the . . .” He shook his head. “This isn’t the thing I was going to show you,” he said briskly, and picked up a length of chain from one of the shelves. “I was just getting this.” He spun and strode past her, out of the room.
“It’s all right, Kennie,” her brother whispered as they turned to follow him. “He really is a librarian.”
She was becoming more certain that he was not. Still, she watched Alex carefully lock the door behind them and then let him lead them up another level and down a winding passageway.
Two paces ahead, Alex said something to one of his pages, and it whirled off, followed by three others. He led them around two more corners, up a short flight of stone stairs, around another corner—she’d had no idea the library was this extensive—to a big circular room with a ceiling that was made entirely of glass. A reading room. The ceiling-window was dirty and scattered with leaves, but it let in enough light to show a room that had been abandoned for a long time. Dust lay thick on the floor, unmarked by footsteps. Dusty cobwebs draped the books on the shelves.
Alex paused in the arched doorway and cocked his head, as if listening for something.
All was still. She heard nothing.
“Wait here,” he ordered, and then stepped into the room. Puffs of dust rose up at every footstep, and then settled again. When he reached the center of the room, he paused. And waited.
Kenneret stood there in the doorway, with Charlie’s warm bulk beside her. She felt wound tight, even a little frightened, expecting something to happen, and then chided herself. Nothing was going to happen. Alex, she thought sadly, really was crazy and had done all the terrible things the letter had said he’d done.
And for long minutes, nothing did happen.
She was just opening her mouth to call an end to it when Alex raised his hand. He’d gone on alert, poised, listening.
“It’s here,” he said softly.
The sound of his voice was answered by a faint rustling sound, like pages turning.
But nothing in the room had moved.
Then, the faintest of breezes brushed through the dust at the edges of the room. Kenneret shivered. How had it gotten so cold? Icy cold. Another tendril of air snaked across the room, sending up a swirl of dust that spiraled and then settled to the floor.
That was enough. Alex went into action. “This is a room full of books about the weather,” he said quickly. Two of his pages swooped in, carrying a metal box. “One of the books is marked with a symbol,” Alex said as the box dropped onto the floor at his feet with a thump and a billow of dust. “It will come for us,” he went on. “Be ready for anything. It’s going to be bad.”
As he spoke, the breeze picked up; dust swirled in little eddies around the room. The glass in the ceiling-
window rattled.
“Stay there, Kenneret,” he ordered. “Charlie, I’m going to need your help.”
With a whoop of excitement, her brother bounded into the room.
At the same moment, there was a rumble from the shelf behind Alex. All at once, the tendrils of air turned into a torrent of wind that shrieked around the room. It ripped books off the shelves and sent them whirling, pages flapping. Sudden rain pelted down, followed by an icy blast of snow.
“Look out!” she heard Alex shout. A bolt of lightning crashed across the room.
Kenneret braced herself against the doorway, buffeted by wind, slashed with curtains of rain. Looking up, she saw that a roiling, greenish-black cloud had gathered just below the glass ceiling. It rumbled with thunder. She heard her brother shout. Books hurtled through the air, and she saw Alex and Charlie duck. A book glanced off Alex’s arm and then one slammed into his back, and he stumbled.
Another bolt of lightning crackled across the room, bouncing from one wall to the next. Then it slowed, turned, and seemed to fix on Alex in the center of the room.
“Duck!” Charlie shouted.
Alex flung himself to the floor, and the bolt flashed over his head, slamming into the shelf of books behind him with an explosion of sparks. The wind whooshed past, and as Alex climbed to his feet, a book came flying at him; he blocked it with his arm, and then another one came. A roar of rain exploded in front of him, and then four more books spun toward his head.
Without hesitating, he drew his sword and blocked the books as they came at him, knocking them to the floor.
Then another book floated closer to him. It hung in a bubble of stillness in the midst of the wildly blowing wind, the rain, the snow. Slowly the book opened. Its pages fluttered, almost as if they were beckoning. She saw Alex lower the sword and take a step closer to it, fascinated, and then he threw his arm over his eyes. “Charlie!” he shouted, his voice hoarse, and her brother was at his shoulder. “Get it!”
The book retreated, and Charlie dove after it, grabbing it and slamming it shut. As he popped the bubble around it, the wind howled, thunder roared, and the ceiling shattered, raining shards of glass all around them. Charlie had the book in his arms, wrestling it to the floor.