CHAPTER FIVE
The thing had defeated all her efforts. Admittedly, Leen hadn’t directed the full force of the Empire against the ancient door and the window with the tantalizing lights; in fact, the only talents to be ranged against it thus far had been her own. Her skills were not meager but neither were they first-rank, or she might very well have been occupying a position other than Archivist. Things being what they were, with the impending Knitting and its inevitable accompanying realignments of the various coalitions and interest groups, palace cabals and pecking orders, she’d thought it best not to become an open-field loose ball in someone’s power game by attracting attention to a forgotten mystery. To be honest with herself, Leen had to admit that the thought of a horde of specialists descending on her library had been a strong argument in favor of keeping knowledge of the whole affair secret; restricted, in fact, to herself.
As far as the records showed, the Archives themselves had never fallen under direct military administration or the control of any organization of secret police. Leen had no intention of becoming the Archivist who’d let that happen, either. She took her oaths seriously, and the heritage she’d been handed down. One of the main tenets of that heritage was that Archivists were independent, owing their primary allegiance not to the Emperor (except as required for the needs of protocol and good sense) but to the Archives they served and to the ideals of the past they recalled, whatever those really were. In practice, that meant that Archivists did their best to do what they damn well pleased, which - considering that they hung around in basements all day reading old books and pushing dust from this surface to that - didn’t generally amount to much one way or another. To be brutally frank, the Archives were a largely forgotten backwater, overlooked in the midst of the Empire’s sprawling management structure. When all was said and done, though, that was just fine. There are worse places to be than the basement, and many worse things to do than read, especially when you’re interrupted only for the odd bit of puttering.
The problem was, the strange room seemed impervious not only to direct force, both physical and sorcerous, but to analysis as well. Its seals and shields were so strong it might as well have been off in another dimension entirely, rather than underneath Leen’s own cellar, for all the good her probing had done. The thing just downright ignored her; it was as aloof to Leen’s efforts as she generally tried to be to the world at large. Actually, Leen admitted, the thing was better at its act than she was at hers. She could learn that much from it, at least. An outside observer with a contrary streak and a captious perspective might pose the thesis that you’d gone a long stroll indeed down the road to dottiness when you sunk to the level of using ancient artifacts as role models. Fortunately this hypothetical observer wasn’t around, though, and in any case Leen wouldn’t have listened to her if she had been. The commentary of her own hyperactive superego was more difficult to evade, but all that really meant was that she wasn’t working as hard at ignoring it as she needed to. A talkative superego was probably another warning sign of encroaching dotage anyway. Senility was not something that ran in Leen’s family, but it never hurt to be watchful.
She sat back on the bottom rung of the circular staircase in the hidden room and stared ahead at the polished metal wall. From a purely esthetic standpoint the place did look nicer with the grime of ages gone, the metal gleaming in the lamplight, the crystal in the adjacent wall sparkling, the air no longer prone to send her into sneezing fits at the slightest swirl of a dust-raising motion. Still, all this cleanliness was clearly a sign of defeat. To have gone unsuccessfully through the interesting options only to arrive at housework was not encouraging, either from the standpoint of solving the mystery or from that of the inherent statement of housework itself. Not encouraging, but there it was.
The thing didn’t seem to be anti-magical, per se, it just seemed to stick its nose in the air and disregard it. Leen couldn’t detect any active shielding, but the fact remained that as far as any probe she’d been able to look up was concerned the space behind the wall was no different than any nondescript hunk of solid rock. Actually, the rock would have been more interesting; a probe into rock would at least give you some mineralogical or metallurgical data back. Transverse defects, grain size, and veins of tin weren’t Leen’s particular gratification point, but data return - even if the data themselves were boring - was good enough for calibration, and for reassuring you you were doing more than just pouring energy down a hole. Except in this case she couldn’t even detect that there was a hole. Action-at-a-distance work had proved similarly useless, and as far as her efforts with a pry-bar, well, she might as well have stayed in bed. It was time to hit the stacks again.
Leen trudged up the stairs and out through the secret door in the bookcase. Even if the sole source of illumination hadn’t been her lantern, and she could have seen all the way to the ends of the Archives in every direction, Leen was convinced that some of the rows of cabinets and bookshelves would have stretched out to a vanishing point like the margins of a road on an endless plain. That is, if the rows of shelves had actually been straight, and the aisles hadn’t been heaped with their own mounds and crates of stuff. One Archivist had done little in her seventeen year tenure but try to map the floor plan. The Goldhound brothers had done a bit better in their survey, but unfortunately they’d been more interested in artifacts than textual material; artworks and treasures and whatnot.
Of course, the Goldhounds had had the question of their personal survival to take into account. They’d had the unhappy fate of serving during the reign of Abysinnia the Moot, in the earliest days of the Empire. The reign of the Moot had almost ended the days of empire once and for all, too, what with his goal of never appearing in court or public without wearing an assortment of treasure that weighed more than he did, and never the same pieces twice. From the histories and the portraits, he hadn’t exactly had an asthenic body build, either. Still, Leen did have the Goldhound directory and Carla’s map, and the half-dozen other catalogues and indexes that had come down to the present time. Perhaps one of them would have something useful to contribute.
Then, too, there were the even-more-secret annex volumes to the main indexes. Those could be the real source of paydirt. If the thing genuinely dated to the Dislocation, it made sense to go where the Dislocation was. Even if time travel was nothing but a theoretical proposition, that didn’t mean the days of the Dislocation were necessarily out of reach, though in a more vicarious sense.
One of the genuine treasures of the Archives was the truly remarkable amount of pre- and trans-Dislocation material scattered around. Among the many secrets the Archivists kept, the scope of the Dislocation collection was both one of the most closely held and one of the most dangerous. When an Archivist was assuming the mantle from his or her (or its, there having been a few nonhumans in the office over the years) predecessor, the time of greatest anxiety, of nervous glances over the shoulder and words in a hushed voice, was when the Dislocation stuff was discussed. Nothing would transform the Archives from a backwater to a strategic asset faster than an Emperor finding out just what-all was warehoused beneath his feet. Telling the truth - that most of the Dislocation material was worthless for military or political purposes - would have been the most futile kind of damage control, the kind no one believes.
The ancients had certainly wielded great forces and powerful technologies, and had clearly been masters of devastating might, but there was little doubt that the mythical stature to which their accomplishments had been elevated over the years was drastically exaggerated. They’d been helpless against the rise of magic and the coming of the gods, hadn’t they? But reason would not be something to count on in a politician let loose in a candy store of presumed militaristic delights. So it was a tenet of the Archivists’ office not to let the problem arise.
But that wasn’t even the real problem. The gods were a jealous lot, and an insecure one to boot. They might natter on about the natural state of man being inconsistent with ever-more-sophisticated works of the hands, but the real reason large-scale or particularly useful technology was proscribed was that they were afraid of it. This was not merely Leen’s own theory. The Dislocation texts weren’t the only forbidden materials squirreled away in the Archives, and for that matter weren’t the most hazardous either. That dubious honor had to be reserved for the small collection of fragmentary holograph material attributable to some of the gods themselves. In one of the most intriguing manuscripts, a certain god, Byron, had written quite directly about the very issue of technology and the gods’ interest in it.
Unearthing the Byron letter during one of her girlish rummaging expeditions had been the turning point that had irrevocably set Leen on the path to Archivist-dom. While her grandfather had tended to what he liked to grandly refer to as Business, Leen had begun her first serious research project. Over the years, a stereotype had developed of the Archivist as not exactly human, but rather some hybrid of ferret and mole, living a solitary life in dark basements, with eyes grown large and weak through excessive use under conditions of insufficient lighting. If this characterization was true, and Leen was willing to admit that was more than likely, her own transformation had begun at that time. But what else could she do? The Byron letter was interesting.
The letter wasn’t interesting only for its contents, either. Intrigued by Byron’s openly subversive remarks, Leen had set out to learn more about him. She’d gone first to the standard suppressed sources, Pink’s Compendium and the Divine Roster, and Men Into Myth to boot, but drawn a total blank. Even Acts and Actors, for all its demonstrated errors still the most readable general history, and with significant chunks of narrative that the others skipped as unsubstantiated hearsay, didn’t have a smidgen.
The only conclusion Leen could reach was that Byron had been purged, his very name blotted out from among the lists of the gods. Nothing like the Spell of Namelessness for him; Byron had been eradicated as though he had never existed, and the memory of the eradication had been eradicated as well.
If that wasn’t enough to intimidate, Leen still thought now, thinking back on it, she didn’t know what was. It gave a pretty good intimation of how the gods would react if they discovered the extent of the Archives’ special holdings. The Empire and its ruling families might hold special stature with the gods, but that was because they played a designated role in the gods’ world order, and understood their limits. Even they couldn’t sidle over the edge without being slapped down as an object lesson. Itting III and his deal with the monks of Leebo was a perfect case in point. Over a singularly uncomfortable half-hour one afternoon, Itting had rotted from within in his robes of state, while the monastery where the monks had been tinkering under his patronage with an arc lamp was now a scenic pond in the north of Gadzura, a stream having filled in the glassy crater.
So for the Archives there were only two courses of action. The one that was thinkable, secrecy, was handed down as a central tenet of office. Leen supposed that every Archivist spent an odd moment here or there contemplating the unthinkable option, that of actually destroying archival material, and with no comprehensive record of the Archives’ full holdings it was possible that some Archivist in the past might have indeed followed that course. One of the prime candidates for destruction, if such had really occurred, would have been any documentation concerning the enigma in the hidden basement. Leen looked out at the stacks and sighed. It might be a hopeless task, and it was unquestionably a dangerous one, but when it came right down to it that what was she here for, after all. Not just to dust spines and sweep up the floor, that was for certain.
Well, Leen had learned a lot since her first days under her grandfather’s guiding but not necessarily watchful eye. One of them was the true nature of the Archivist’s Business. While a pleasantly large part of it was exactly the rummaging and reading she had fallen in love with in the first place, there remained other duties as well. One of the inflexible laws of Other Duties seemed to be that they always most needed doing just when you’d rather be doing something else. Well, there was no help for it; Tuesdays were Tuesdays. She secured the secret door behind her and set off across the floor.
Leen paused at her desk. The three herb volumes and the illuminated bestiary were already loaded on the two-shelf trolley, along with several books by an obscure novelist of the previous century which she’d rescued from the family of mice who’d been in the process of abridging them. Was there anything else Vellum had requested? Where was his last note? Oh, there, in the clutter atop her to-do box, just where she’d put it. Right, he was still after the missing volume of Hali Shee’s conflict precipitation treatise; it had thus far proved elusive, but she’d have to assure him she was still on its trail. She had come up with the old hound-care omnibus, though.
That was everything - darn it, no, not quite. Leen sat down at the desk, opened the right-hand drawer, and retrieved a cigar-box-size chest from behind a sheaf of uncollated notes. She propped it on the desk blotter, flipped back the lid, and made a face. Beneath an untidy cap of black hair streaked with premature strokes of gray a face frowned back at her, itself also streaked with the totally characteristic gray of dust. Leen wrinkled her nose at her image in the mirror and set to work with a cloth at making herself presentable.
Leen’s sister had finally prevailed on her to at least keep the mirror and a comb at her desk. “You’re not the only one in this family, you know,” her sister had told her menacingly. Leen had tried for the umpteenth time to explain to her sister the difference between hygiene (unquestionably important and socially relevant) and appearance for the sake of vanity (transitory and a sink of precious time). Her sister had been intransigent. “You may not care, but just think what it does to the rest of us,” had been Susannah’s ultimatum. It wasn’t until their brother had weighed in supporting Susannah’s position (at least Leen thought that’s what he’d been doing, when he quoted an allusive couplet whose source was as obscure as most of the things he came up with) that Leen had capitulated. It hadn’t been a total surrender - Leen still refused to waste time dyeing her hair, and her makeup was no more than a few strategically token splashes - but it had gotten Susannah off her back and away from her throat. On that issue and for the time being, anyway.
There was only one way to handle chores - if you were going to do them, you’d might as well do them right. In this case that meant not only good but fast. A couple of minutes, which was all her appearance deserved in any case, and she was ready to move out. Pushing the book cart ahead of her, Leen headed for the door.
Leen was aware of two entrances to the Archives proper. A place with the size and convoluted geometry of the Archives would always give rise to notions of disguised tunnels in the stygian depths, sealed passages, concealed doors, and whatnot. Indeed, certain Archivists had been fiends on the subject, fishing out rumors and indulging their speculations for pages on end in their logs. Leen remained skeptical. To her knowledge no additional exits or secret passages had ever come to light; none but the one Robin had found, anyhow. That was just as well. The Back and Front Doors might have been there for centuries but that didn’t make them prosaic. They were a handful-and-a-half all by themselves, which had always been plenty for her.
The Front Door actually had a door, in contrast to the Back Door, which was more of a trick of light and shadow behind its alcove. The Back Door also had its terminal pit and the Inclined Labyrinth, of course, making the Back Door a more scenic traverse overall, if a somewhat longer one. Leen could navigate them both in the dark, and had, and had half a thought she could make the excursion in her sleep, not that that was an eventuality that seemed likely to arise. One thing she did not do, though, was let herself get overconfident and hurry through. Certain things just took as long as they took; either you finished them or they finished you.
That didn’t mean one didn’t get impatient, Leen thought, waiting for the Front Door to recognize her and creak open. One just had to deal with –
The large creak-and-rumble began and the heavy arch-topped door pivoted slowly away from her. It was hinging on the right and outside today, Leen noted, which might mean it was entering a new phase of its cycle. The next few days would likely tell. She pushed the cart through the door into the safety zone in the vestibule and saw the cart tucked away in its dumbwaiter niche, took a few deep breaths from her diaphragm, and set her feet on the first keypoints of the recessional path.
Time always came to resemble taffy on your way in and out, Leen had been taught. This go-around, for some reason the null zones zipped past without note while the Watermark, of all junctures, was turbulent, its airspace dragging at her with the approximate consistency of flypaper. Have to check the hair again, she found herself thinking irrelevantly, as she gyrated her way through and into the Great Room with its self-importance field.
Finally Leen debarked through the door at the other end, at the top of the flight of invisible steps. Archivist Creeley had known what he was doing when he’d set up the wards guarding the Archives, and the whole tradition of Archivism as well, but he’d clearly possessed a sadistic streak. Leen staggered past the door jamb and collapsed into the chair just beyond. After a moment, when her heartbeat had slowed, she took up the pitcher of tea from the end table next to the chair and drained half of it in one long gurgle; rehydration was important. But so was exercise, and Leen could tell she was getting out of shape.
She’d have to reorganize her schedule to allow more time for a workout. Leen wasn’t ready to turn things over to a new Archivist, by any means, and anyway who was there who’d be up for it? Robin was barely more than an infant, although already a promising one, and even though Vellum wasn’t an infant he might have already gone as far as he could.
On cue, the man appeared. As librarian in charge of the Reading Room, traditionally the senior member of the Archivist’s small staff, Vellum had been a political appointee, but had proved nonetheless qualified even given the patronage involved. Still, the talents required to navigate the Doorways were more than just a sense for books. “Good day, Archivist,” Vellum said. “Another early morning, I take it?”
“Uh huh. The books I could find are there if you want to haul them up.”
“Oh, good,” said Vellum. “The Potamian herbal?” He grasped the large windlass crank mounted in the wall and began to haul it around.
“Yes,” Leen said, “I found the herbals. The bestiary, too.”
“Lord What’s-his-name will be pleased about that.”
Lord What’s-his-name? Who had she seen around lately? “Lord Farnsbrother?” asked Leen.
Vellum cocked his head, clearly checking his memory. “Yes, the very one.”
“Farnsbrother doesn’t read,” Leen muttered. “What’s he doing, starting a zoo?”
Vellum was of middling height, a bit stoop-shouldered, his most notable features the matching set of bifocal spectacles and watery eyes; a recruiting-poster image of a bibliothecary, in fact. Like the typical librarian, he also had a dangerous tendency toward aloofness and a disregard of the occasional political implications of the job. He certainly had a spirit for books, though, and had thrown himself into the work - he’d adopted his new name when he’d taken the position.
Vellum gave a final heave on the crank and the cart of books rose into view in the dumbwaiter slot, none the worse for wear. The books, being in the traditional sense lifeless, were able to transit the maze without destruction. And a good thing, too - you’d never get a handcart up those stairs. Leen followed Vellum and the cart into the back stacks of the Reading Room.
Leen sometimes thought of the Reading Room as a decoy for scholars, to keep them away from the real stuff squirreled away in the Archives proper. In truth that was actually an understatement; the Reading Room was impressive in its own right, even by comparison with the Archives. In fact, to the extent the public mind knew that something called the Archives existed, it thought Reading Room and Archives were one and the same. Anyone surveying the Reading Room’s holdings, its warren of shelves and reading nooks, of drafty ceilings and precarious overhangs, would naturally wonder how there could be that many books and papers in the whole world; anyone who didn’t know better, at any rate. They turned a corner and now Leen could see the large central chamber ahead. To their right at the intersection was a section walled off with iron bars and a locked gate, the tomes inside it lashed to their shelves with stout chains. Leen patted her key ring out of reflex and saw Vellum do the same. State secrets or arcana of the gods weren’t the only perilous materials in the stacks. The Thaumaturgical area was off-limits to all but qualified readers, at least as much for the protection of the browser as out of a need to control dissemination of that particular information.
The cool hush of the great room beckoned as they drew closer, and then the hall itself was opening around them - the clerestory windows around the base of the dome, the allegorical frescoes marching up the curves of the dome itself, the mahogany balconies, the long reading tables and stand-up lecterns, the statuary, the portraits of emperors and Archivists both, the marble floors; all in all, quite an edifice. And it was Tuesday, so the Archivist was In.
The be-monocled Lord Farnsbrother was already waiting at her desk, his jowls waggling with impatience. The ends of a marten stole dangled by his waist, crossing on their way down from his neck an assortment of chest-jewels and a brocade robe. Farnsbrother’s family tree had its roots back before the Bones. For the last few generations they’d done little but live off their foreign rents and an imperial grant at one of the smallest Living Mines; the last time Leen had reviewed the peerage Farnsbrother had been the sole hope of continuing the family line. From the look of him, a judicious wager on behalf of extinction might not be inappropriate. “I say,” Lord Farnsbrother addressed Vellum, “do you have it? The Beast-Book?”
“As you requested, Lord, it has been found.” Vellum passed it over.
Farnsbrother eagerly flipped pages. Leen winced; several of the signatures had already seemed loose, and the spine itself might not stand up to extreme handling. As he neared the back of the book, though, Farnsbrother’s face darkened. He spoke in an ominous tone. “This – this book shows only land animals, and a few birds and things.” Farnsbrother struck the current page with the back of his hand. The leaf he struck was one of text illuminated in black and red pen with gold leaf accents; the facing page illustration showed a nicely executed griffin rampant, clutching of all things a salmon in its upraised claw.
“Why, yes,” said Leen. “They are what Fernandez was known for.”
“But -” Lord Farnsbrother sputtered, “but - there’s no sea creatures. There’s barely enough time as it is! - I absolutely must get the shipyard to work today, or my barge just will not be ready. Do you understand? It will - not - be - ready!”
“Your barge? Not ready?”
“Not in time,” said Farnsbrother crossly. “And I’m certain this Squid-thing won’t wait.”
Squid-thing? Oh! - of course, that Squid-thing. “You plan to decorate your barge for the occasion, Lord -”
“Not just decorate, woman! It’s the whole superstructure: it has to be rebuilt. It must be the right theme! These birds and cattle just will not do, they will not do at all!”
Leen raised a hand. “Lord Farnsbrother, you have still come to the right place. Now that I understand your needs, we can show you just the reference you’re looking for.”
Farnsbrother paused in his gesticulations. “Oh, can you really? That’s dashed timely, I don’t mind telling you. If I -”
“Say no more,” Leen told him. “I will not keep you a moment longer from your destiny. Vellum, please show Lord Farnsbrother to the oceanography section, and stay to assist him in his research, will you?”
“This way, my Lord,” said Vellum, leading the suddenly uplifted peer toward the stacks. Leen collapsed into her chair. Tuesdays, bah! Business!
And the “Squid-thing.” Unfortunately that was only the barest part of it, although it was indisputably a highlight. Fortunately these were days of stability and the emperors had lately been a hardy lot; Leen didn’t think civilization could stand a Knitting more than once a decade at the outside. Already Peridol was getting to be so crowded with out-of-towners you could barely cross a street at three in the morning, and the revelry hadn’t even officially started yet. It would be difficult to fit a decent day’s work in edgewise. With such a round of parties and festivities coming up she couldn’t possibly arrange to miss all of them, could she?
Her well-known absent-mindedness would no doubt be good for a few, even if there were far too many far-too-loyal retainers around to keep reminding her of where she needed to be and when, but even she couldn’t use that excuse for everything. Being unpleasant wouldn’t help much either; in Leen’s circles most everyone was unpleasant, but that never stopped them from being invited or expected to attend. Damn, Leen thought. It wouldn’t be just makeup, either. I suppose I’ll have to break down and have my hair cut.
Susannah, Robin’s mother, would unquestionably be in the thick of it, and their own mother too for that matter. Her sister was a bit of a dope, but you certainly couldn’t say that of Mother. Or Lemon for that matter. Leen might have inherited her grandfather’s archival talents down the line through her father (who, for all one could tell, had missed out on brains entirely himself), but her brother Lemon had gotten the legacy of her mother’s side of the family in full force. Lemon would be having a fine time for himself over the next few weeks as well, if not for quite the same reasons as Susannah and Mother. There would be the usual flirting and dalliance, eating to excess and dancing, too, if not quite enough of the latter to compensate for the former, but above all for Lemon there would be Business. Not the same Business as Leen’s, of course. He’d be out for himself and his own machinations, that went without saying; Lemon’s entanglements were almost impossibly complex. She’d have to ask him again what he was up to. Not that he’d tell her, or at least not that he’d tell her in a straightforward enough fashion that a mere person could understand, but -
“Excuse me, my dear.”
Leen looked smoothly up from the ledger where she’d ostensibly been reviewing Vellum’s account of the recent repairs to the dome. If you were going to go through life gathering wool, she had decided many years ago, it was only prudent to develop a few devices to keep the habit under wraps. After years of practice, she could now dream off standing up, that was an easy one, and she could go into fugue seated at a desk without her shoulders slipping or her head nodding, so that a casual observer, especially from the back, would presume she was merely engrossed in study. The bigger trick was to return smoothly to full awareness and orientation without a gap in conversation, and without the audience becoming aware you’d ever been away.
“My apologies for disturbing you,” the man went on. “You appeared lost in thought, but the sign here on your desk does indicate your official presence.”
Well, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. The face looking down on her was tanned, bearing a dark mustache in bold contrast to the flashing white teeth set in an insouciant grin; above were blue eyes and a shock of dark hair. The body, all swelling shoulders, muscular chest, and trim waist, was encased in a discretely flashy outfit of scarlet and jet, except for the peak of the left shoulder blade curving around to the back, which shone with a swath of silver. Leen could see the shoulder blade since the man was leaning over her with his left elbow on the desk just in front of her ledger, bringing his head within whispering distance of her ear, but even if his rippling back had been hidden from view she would have known the silver of office was there. “Good day, my lord Scapula,” Leen said. “Is there a particular title I might assist you with?”
“A title?” said the Scapula. “Ah yes, a title. Well, then, let us say my title of interest today is Arleen.”
Is this research or just casual browsing? Leen thought. She didn’t say it, though; she didn’t want to get started with him. “Shall I show you to the card catalog, or will directions be sufficient?”
The Scapula made his eyes smolder. The man did have exceptional animal magnetism, not that that was any concern of hers, of course. “Your personal accompaniment is exactly what I was planning on,” he told her. “Although the idea of instruction does have interesting potentialities. Please, then, instruct me in your will. Or no, on second thought please don’t.” He flashed his teeth at her. “I feel I know your true will much better than you do yourself.”
“Tell me how much I’ve left to my nephew Robin, then,” Leen said under her breath.
Did his eyes narrow the merest bit? Well, probably, and she didn’t care if he’d heard her, either. But she couldn’t just tell him to get lost, not the Scapula; he wasn’t exactly some run-of-the-streets masher, no matter how he acted. Was he here alone, or had he brought an entourage? Over by the encyclopedias was a small knot of minor Digitals; that was the sort of gang he might have trailing along behind him. They were arguing in low voices over something spread out between them on the top of the half-height bookcase, though, and now that Leen thought about it she half-remembered them straggling in by themselves a quarter-hour or so before. Assume the Scapula was alone, then. That meant she could speak more openly, without the fear of precipitating some vendetta necessitated by the presence of witnesses.
On the other hand, absence of witnesses meant that he could act more openly, too. He raised a hand as she began to speak again and applied it gently but firmly across her mouth. “The festivities of this season of our joy are almost upon us,” the Scapula murmured. “Shortly the new lord of us all will walk in our midst for the first time in his aspect of state, and the great gala will begin. Surely, even with the demands of your responsibilities you will venture forth into the season? At the Inauguration Ball, say, in particular? It would be my honor to have you accompany me. I warn you, you may speak only to indicate assent.” He raised an eyebrow at her.
She frowned down at the hand still covering her mouth and wondered about biting it. Better not; that would most likely only encourage him. Had she once heard that he liked to be nibbled? Violent eroticism would be fully in keeping with his public persona, and what she had heard of his private one, too.
But why was he after her, of all people? Aloof though she tried to be, Leen knew she wasn’t beautiful enough to be anyone’s ice lady, and no one had come after her for her mind, either, but that was just as well; she had long ago decided she was well-suited for spinsterhood by natural temperament and inclination anyway. True, she was in the line of succession, somewhere, but no one was about to arrange her marriage for the good of the state. And a good thing no one was dumb enough to try, either.
So what was the Scapula up to?
Well, as long as she could breathe, she could ultimately outlast him. He couldn’t be very comfortable bent across the desk like that. And then there was the possibility of a diversion -
Leen heard an awkward cough next to her chair. Yes, Vellum, and about time, too. “Excuse me, my lord, Archivist, might I help you?”
The look the Scapula turned on Vellum was no little smolder, it was a full-scale roast. But his grip did relax enough for Leen to slip backward out of his grasp; she kicked her chair away from the desk, too, for good measure. “Thank you, Vellum,” she said, “but no. My lord Scapula and I were just discussing the catalog holdings.”
“As you say, Archivist,” Vellum muttered with relief, and quickly vanished back into the stacks.
The Scapula’s gaze had toned itself back down when it returned to her. “Let us discuss the arrangements, then, shall we?”
“This is a place of serious business, my lord Scapula, not a spot for assignation.”
“Are the two ever long separated?” stated the Scapula. “Very well, let us say I make you my business. Will this simple entreaty suffice to win me the pleasure of your company, or must I pursue you further? You will see, I will not be denied.”
Leen paused. They moved in the same social circles, or would, if Leen bothered to circulate socially more than the required minimum. This was not to say they’d ever been anything more than casual acquaintances. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; they’d been partnered at one of the Pectoral Duke’s out-of-town weekends a year or two back. Leen had avoided him as much as possible, sitting through meals and doing the required dances but otherwise escaping to her research in the old Duke’s library. As Leen recalled, she hadn’t slept with him either. Her ignoring him could have caused a bit of a stir if he hadn’t been so clearly pursuing Crewtenfield’s young wife; had gotten her, too, if Leen recalled correctly. Oh, Leen knew who he was, all right, but then so did all of Peridol. The Scapula was clearly one to watch. The buzz had him a clear contender; at the rate he was moving, the next Knitting might very well be his.
There was some shady bit of family business in his past, which only made him fit right in with everyone else in the upper crust. There was also more than a whiff of menace. People who opposed him had a tendency to shift their views abruptly, or equally abruptly decide to leave town for an extended stay in some out-of-the-way province or another. That, too, was only the way the game was played; the Scapula wouldn’t be a serious prospect for emperor if he couldn’t take care of his affairs with the efficiency of any appropriate means.
But Leen didn’t want to be a player, even at second hand. “You’re not after me for myself, Lord Scapula, and you certainly don’t want me for my looks. I’m aloof, I have a nasty temperament, and I’ve got a bad habit of speaking my mind, so you’re not here for my charm either. Why are you bothering me?”
“Spirit is a rare commodity,” said the Scapula, “the genuine sort of spirit at any rate. As one moves up in the world one primarily encounters the sycophant in all his servile guises; the flatterer, the toady, the truckler. Not that there isn’t some satisfaction from the cringing masses flinging themselves at your feet, you understand, but the gratification is limited. Mastering those who aren’t fully alive; what challenge is there in that?”
So you say I’m fully alive, and you’ve decided to master me? Hah! thought Leen. A likely story. “Is it my brother,” Leen said. “You want something out of him? Or if it’s Susannah you’ve got in mind there’s no need to bother with me; just walk up to her and ask her. Toss a sterling silver rose at her feet if you want, she’d like that even more.”
The Scapula had adjusted his position, seating himself companionably on the edge of her desk. He passed one hand over his opposite sleeve, and when he turned over his palm a flower nestled there, its thorny stem trailing up his arm; a sterling silver rose. He tossed it down in front of her. “You are a far rarer catch than you give yourself credit for. In addition to your strength of personality, intellect, and figure, you are also unmarried and unattached.” He raised his eyebrows guilelessly. “Your sister is none of these.”
“That’s never stopped anybody before,” Leen muttered. She stared at the flower lying across her book. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“A bud vase is the usual implement, filled one-third to halfway with clear water.”
Everyone always thought they were a comedian. “You have one of those up your sleeve too? ... Oh, really. You’re not serious.” She was sorry she’d asked.
“There you are,” pronounced the Scapula, inserting the rose neatly through the neck of the vase. It was foolish, she knew, but she had always had a soft spot for crystal; was this gift accidental, or had he known? Regardless of his motivations, the vase was actually rather nice; the classic fluted shape with splayed petals at the top and a family crest etched delicately into the neck.
“You have any more parlor tricks you intend to show me, or were you ready to leave?”
“This is scarcely a parlor,” the Scapula said softly, “nor are all my skills appropriate for a general audience.”
“Indeed,” said Leen. “Your reputation speaks for itself. It speaks quite widely, too, I might add.”
He turned up the heat on his gaze again. “Madame Librarian, it is a time to be seen, not to cower away in this tomb of an Archive. Perhaps I’ve offended you? Well then, let me make amends. Accompany me. Be at my side. After that, who can say?”
“I can say, and I can say it right now. Thank you, but no.”
“Very well,” said the Scapula, getting to his feet. “Since you prefer to think about what you plan to wear, you give me the pleasure of conferring with you again on the final details.” He cocked his head for a moment in thought. “I will have my couturier call,” he decided. “A cosmetologist, too, perhaps.”
“You’re forgetting your vase.”
“Not at all. Accept it as my gift, in memory of our little tryst.” He moved in a blur; before Leen knew what was happening, he had her hand clasped firmly in his and was pressing it to his mouth. He paused, launched a last few eye-embers at her over her upraised arm, then placed her hand back down on her ledger. Finally he bowed, said “Good day, my dear,” and turned and glided toward the exit.
As her grandfather liked to say, land’s sake! She didn’t have time for this. What a bother ...
Of course, he was rather attractive, in his way, and she was human ...
No, Leen told herself. Totally out of the question. She was a professional person, at the top of her profession in fact, and he and his balls and galas and vases and whatever-else were nothing but a distraction. Probably part of some plot, too, for all anyone knew. Completely out of the question. She’d just take the vase and hide it in a back drawer somewhere, or better yet drop it in the trash ...
But the vase really was rather striking, at that. It rang at the touch of a fingertip, and the etching was fairly remarkable, with a delicate sense of line and a nicely executed jaguar head in profile. Perhaps she’d let it sit for a day or two before she tossed it out.