The Book of Transformations

NINETEEN

The next morning, back inside their clifftop residence, the Knights’ tempers were heating up. Lan wanted to rant at the old, skinny cultist with grey hair in front of her but remained calm on the surface. The woman’s skin sagged visibly, and the bags around her eyes said she hadn’t had an easy life. With a copy of People’s Observer in his pocket, Investigator Fulcrom paced back and forth behind her as she explained what had happened at the asylum and, though he tried not to show it, he cringed at her words. Feror stood in the background for a while, pretending not to make notes, eyeing the female cultist with casual disdain.

‘So’, Vuldon accused the cultist, ‘you just abandoned the place.’

An experiment had turned sour: a fire broke out in their rooftop laboratory, but they did not know the cause. It was thought that substances exploded out of a relic killing one of their own, and soon it had seeped into the floorboards. Highly combustible, it ravaged the whole of the top floors, so the cultists had simply vacated.

‘It’s not quite like that,’ the cultist replied.

‘No, we tried to get some out, but then we weren’t sure how long we had.’

‘The fire wasn’t that bad,’ Vuldon declared. ‘That material wasn’t as flammable as you make out. You just ran because you’re cowards, hiding behind your damn magic.’

‘It isn’t magic,’ the cultist hissed. ‘It’s research.’

‘We could do without that kind of research,’ Vuldon said. ‘Just how long had you been farming zombies, eh?’

‘Well, without such research,’ the cultist explained, ‘we wouldn’t have been able to provide you with such powers. The whole facility was set up for the purposes of research in order to generate various powers that the Knights could use — you were, in fact, just the start of things. They were all quite necessary, as I’m sure you’d understand. To damage them was, in some way, to benefit you — and therefore the city.’

Behind, Feror closed his eyes, nodding softly.

If I didn’t already feel guilty about my position…

Vuldon marched towards her. ‘You lying, patronizing b-’

‘Easy, Vuldon.’ Fulcrom stepped between the two of them before things could get any worse.

Eventually Feror and the other cultist left them with their guilt. Lan wasn’t sure if she could do this any more.

Vuldon and Tane stormed off into the city, and as they closed the door, she grabbed Fulcrom’s sleeve and said, ‘I want to get out of all this.’

‘OK, let’s get a drink,’ he said. ‘I know of just the place.’

‘No,’ she urged, ‘I want to get out of the Knights.’

‘I know what you meant,’ he replied coolly. ‘I still think we should get a drink.’

*

At that point between breakfast and lunch when the bistros of the city experienced a lull in activity, Lan and Fulcrom entered one such establishment, taking shelter from a sudden snowstorm.

On the upper levels of Villjamur, only those without jobs, yet with enough money, could be out drinking at this hour. That usually meant retired landowners or those on a military pension, or youths drinking away their parents’ wealth.

The bistro was one of those wood and metal joints that you didn’t often see in Villjamur any more, and Lan found its bookshelves, thick tables, pot plants, log fires and candles to be utterly charming. Three smartly dressed old men sat in warm silence at one table by the stained-glass window, and a red-haired girl was behind the counter cleaning the glasses from the morning rush.

‘I come here when I need to think.’ Fulcrom parted his robe as he sat down.

Lan sat opposite him, keeping her thick black cloak close to cover her uniform. She didn’t want fuss being made right now — twice people had come up to her in the street, and all she could do was smile politely and move away. The serving girl came to take their order. In here everything seemed so cocooned, so comfortable, and she felt she could really talk to Fulcrom. ‘I’m not cut out for this,’ Lan began. ‘You should find someone else, someone who can cope better. Our group — it isn’t what I thought it was. I don’t want to be some tool that the Emperor can use to make people feel safe.’ She explained how useless she had been the previous night at the asylum.

‘Lan, you should stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ Fulcrom replied. ‘You’ve been given a wonderful opportunity. Don’t waste it on angst.’

‘Do you have any idea’, she snapped, ‘what I’ve been through in life?’

‘I can’t pretend I understand your pain, but I’ve read your file. I know your secrets, sure, if that’s what you mean.’

She leaned back in her chair, unnerved by the unspoken threat of exposure. Even the hint of it was like a slap in the face.

Fulcrom reached forward to clasp her hands in his. His dark rumel skin was thick and tough, and for some reason she felt intensely feminine being touched by him, enjoyed the sensation, and refused to feel bad for enjoying it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Look, don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone — as far as I’m concerned, the past is the past.’ He began to speak with great tenderness. ‘The threat of your exposure is from them, the cultists, and the Emperor and his agents. Which is to say — you’ve really no choice in any of this. You’ve been given this change, and a job to do, so you have to accept it.’

What do you really think of me? she felt the urge to say. Lan was so vulnerable all of a sudden, at this junction of life in the middle of nowhere. All she could do was sigh.

The serving girl brought over their drinks and left.

‘I can barely look after myself — let alone anyone else. I’m just not very good at being a hero.’

‘Well, you’ll have to be one,’ Fulcrom replied. ‘The city needs you.’

She reflected on this. ‘I’m scared of so many things. The dangers, falling from the air and dying. And I’m scared that you know so much about me and… well, what do you think of me?’ She whispered the words whilst looking around at the other tables, just in case they were overheard. ‘I need to know, do you even consider me to be real? Does my past affect how you treat me?’

Fulcrom gave a beatific sigh. ‘The world isn’t black and white, I know that much. You get feminine men, masculine women, and a whole bunch of in-betweens. So I can well understand you’re worried. But — really — you’ve no reason to be.’

It seemed the right answer, even though he didn’t say what she wanted him to say. ‘The danger here is that I’m trusting you with who I am and I know next to nothing about you. You never talk about yourself.’

Fulcrom appeared stunned for a moment, and she wondered if she’d ventured too far into uncertain territory. Embarrassment began to creep over her. ‘I didn’t mean to be forward and cross some professional line…’

‘No,’ Fulcrom said, still wide-eyed. He gave an awkward laugh. This wasn’t going well. ‘No, it’s just that it’s taken me so long to work out something.’

‘What?’ she asked. A moment passed as he stared at the table. ‘Come on,’ she teased nervously.

‘You remind me of my former — now dead — wife. She would always say that she wanted to know me, that I kept myself to myself, that I was more interested in cleanliness than her.’ A glance came, in which he was clearly gauging her trust, ‘And you have remarkably similar eyes.’

‘Oh.’ What was she supposed to say to that? Was it even a good thing? Similar eyes… She must have been human. ‘You’re entitled to a secret or two yourself, you don’t have to tell me.’

He stared into his drink. ‘No, it’s OK. You’re right: how can you trust me if you know nothing about me? She passed away several years ago. She was killed by a crossbow bolt at the scene of a robbery.’

‘I’m… I’m sorry to hear that. Was she in the Inquisition?’

‘No, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. For whatever reason, probably because they found her on the scene, she was labelled as an accomplice — I know, the partner of an investigator, too.’

Fulcrom moved on quickly. He spoke of trivial things, then of his work for the Inquisition, of crimes he had solved and, due to his dedication, he talked of a lonely existence. In between ruminations, he sipped his tea with care, and used a napkin with grace. He’d joined the Inquisition because he liked the stories about it that his family used to tell him. Rumels, it seemed, were proud of their association with law enforcement.

‘This is no consolation, Lan, but this world of ours constantly throws things at us, mostly horrible events, and it never stops. Some people choose to look away and focus on their own lives, but as it’s our job, we have to face it day in, day out.’ A pause. ‘But I guess your life’s been pretty tough already, hasn’t it. I suppose being a Knight is one of the more comfortable positions you’ve been in?’

‘Well, my most pressing concern, other than the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing, is that I’m scared of being who I am, being in the public eye, being so recognizable.’ Lan paused. ‘I knew one or two other transgendered people from my entertainment days. It seemed a good community for us to hide in. We didn’t exactly see eye to eye, but we didn’t completely hate each other.’

‘What happened to them?’ Fulcrom asked.

‘One of them was murdered,’ Lan said. ‘She was murdered because a group of men sexually assaulted her, then found her out. She was dragged into a nearby marsh and stabbed repeatedly — just for not fitting into a category; or perhaps more specifically, that she was not what they were after. The men were repulsed by her. Sickened because she was different.’ Lan was aware she was speaking in a drone, but she was consciously washing the emotion from her mind — a self-preservation tool. ‘This was in some small town that the circus travelled through. The other girl, she saw the assault, but didn’t report it at first — she was in hiding. By the time the circus moved on it was too late to do anything about it. You yourself must know how these disconnected communities can be sometimes.’

‘How did you find out — about the murder, I mean?’

‘The other girl — well, she eventually caught up with the show. That was many weeks later. She pleaded with our owner to return, to report the crime to military installations along the route, but he wasn’t interested. Said he’d had a lot of his retinue die on him, what was one more? I was too scared to force anything to happen. The other girl, she ran away. I never saw her after that. I still feel guilty about it, and such shame, but I wanted to hide myself as much as I could. I didn’t want the same to happen to me.’

Lan peered up at him, and he seemed uncertain of how to react. He shook his head and held her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Lan.’

Lan didn’t know about that. Life was certainly easier than before.

‘People fear what they don’t understand,’ Fulcrom continued. ‘I’ll freely admit it is difficult — and more so — for your… you…’ He shook his head. ‘Even I struggle. I understand, to some extent — not that it helps — since my family spent a year in one of the smaller towns, which was hell if you were a rumel. We faced threats, our doors were kicked in during the night, my father had eggs thrown at him when he went to work in the mornings. They didn’t welcome what they didn’t understand. They thought we were bizarre monsters, so we came back to Villjamur, where there’s a great mix of peoples — garudas, rumels, humans — people seem to get on better. There’s more understanding here, for all its sins.’

‘At least you can freely be a rumel and be accepted by law,’ Lan said. ‘Hell, you lot are mostly the law — why is that?’

He laughed at that. ‘A quirk of old doctrines. Rumels live far longer than humans, and experience is required for the job. That’s what we tell ourselves, anyway, but it’s also because thousands of years ago, so the history goes, there was a great tension between the species. We rumels were given high positions of legal office to placate our needs against the many human rulers. It forced us both to be civilized to each other — and I guess it worked.’

‘There’s not much in the way of legal protection for the people I used to be. The law doesn’t even recognize shades of gender — it’s very black and white, but luckily our culture is such a wreckage that anyone can change who they are in a heartbeat with a forged document in their hands. No one asks questions, no one wants proof — apart from getting into Villjamur.’

‘You can make your mark, here in the city,’ Fulcrom concluded. ‘Life is tough for all of us, in our own ways, and if it wasn’t you who received these powers it would have been someone else eventually. You’ve been chosen because of your proven adaptability: you’re well known in cultist circles — they knew they could rely on your body. And those people who were used for research — there’s nothing folk like us can do about it. Choose your battles, but stay with us, Lan. You can choose to be a force for good.’

She didn’t say anything.

Fulcrom announced that it was time to go. He said something about having business with a priest, and smiled earnestly. Before he left, Lan — conscious she was going to do it — gave him a peck on the cheek and whispered her thanks. It seemed to disarm Fulcrom totally, and as he stuttered away through the snowy streets, she felt shocked at how forward she could be.

She liked the sensation.

*

Ulryk was waiting patiently on the steps of the Inquisition headquarters as fat flakes of snow drifted down around him. Fulcrom marvelled at how peaceful he seemed to be, despite the flurry of citizens and the bustle of Villjamur.

‘Good afternoon, Ulryk,’ Fulcrom called out.

The priest turned and gave a welcoming smile. ‘A most delightful day, investigator.’

‘You can tell you’ve not been in the city long. The citizens are sick of all this cold weather and snow.’

They moved across the city at a leisurely pace, and Fulcrom showed him where some of the smaller libraries were, as they headed to the largest in the city, around the corner from the Astronomer’s Glass Tower. Ulryk gasped as they entered a vast courtyard of glass flowers, in a variety of colours, but mainly blues and purples. Giant petals and heart-shaped leafs were glittering.

‘This is phenomenally beautiful!’ he sighed, clasping his hands together. ‘How old is this garden?’

Fulcrom chuckled at his reaction. ‘A few hundred years, more or less. They were built before the great Varltung Uprising.’

A couple were walking arm in arm to one of the benches at the far end of the courtyard, where they sat enveloped in each other’s attention. Rising up around the scene were some of the finest buildings in the city, limestone houses with vast windows that overlooked the glass flowers. Some were glowing warmly with firelight, and it highlighted just how cold it was outside.

‘Here it is,’ Fulcrom said. At the far end of the courtyard was the central library of Villjamur, indicated by a wide-arched entrance at the top of a stairway.

There was a member of the city guard standing at the bottom, blond-haired and round-faced, clutching his sword with one hand and gazing sternly at some point in the distance.

‘Sele of Urtica,’ the guard said.

‘Sele of Urtica,’ Fulcrom replied, flashing his medallion. ‘I didn’t realize they were guarding this place as well?’

‘Every major landmark in the city is being guarded now,’ the officer replied. ‘Someone’s here day in, day out.’

Fulcrom nodded and continued up the steps with the priest. ‘This is the place you’ll find the oldest books in the city,’ Fulcrom said to him. ‘There are a thousand legal texts going back thousands of years, which we in the Inquisition are forced to use from time to time. But I’ll see that the librarians treat you right — they can be a brutal bunch.’

*

Four storeys high, and banking into the distance over an uneven topography, the library was intimidating in size and bewildering in its layout. Lit by glass lanterns, spaced regularly at every fifteen feet, it looked like a settlement all of its own. Thousands of books bound in varying shades of leather were stored here, and among them Ulryk seemed more relaxed than usual, as if finally having returned home. A few custodians shifted intermittently like ghosts between shelving units and smaller, more concealed vaults of books. Fulcrom knew of many more rooms underground, too — sepulchres containing texts sacred to the Jorsalir church, as well as tomes in which the foundation of the Empire had been detailed. Some were said to hold clay tablets and books written in rare script that no one alive could decipher.

Fulcrom flashed his Inquisition medallion at the main desk and had a quiet word with the librarian. Presently, Ulryk was granted access to all areas of the library including sensitive areas normally open to only those in the Inquisition or those attached to the Council. But when offered a custodian to guide him around, the priest declined. Ulryk’s only question was the location of the scriptorium, the room in which texts were copied from language to language, and distributed across the Archipelago.

Fulcrom followed Ulryk around the first floor. Any expectations of revelations or dramatic magic suddenly being uttered from the priest’s lips rapidly diminished, and it wasn’t long until he became bored with constantly loitering, prodding the spines of books, or blowing away dust to read the various titles:

Languages of the West, The Second Book of Poetics, Voyniches.

‘So what exactly are you looking for?’ Fulcrom whispered. He leant on one of the rails from which he could see the tiers above and the level below, where a handful of Villjamur’s citizens were either milling about or seated at dark wooden desks, studying by lantern light.

‘I told you, the other copy of The Book of Transformations,’ Ulryk replied, not annoyed at all at having to repeat himself. ‘It’s the only text that I desire, but I don’t expect to find it easily. And I have a casual interest in most other texts, theologies of course, to see if there are any deviations to aid my own research.’

‘So,’ Fulcrom gestured at the sheer expanse of the place, ‘you simply start at the bottom and work your way up, through a million books?’

The priest chortled quietly. ‘That could be the case, though I suspect I will be heading downwards, not up. No, for now, I am merely browsing — I feel so at peace here, amongst all this… recorded knowledge, this history.’

‘Didn’t you say most of it was fake?’ Fulcrom teased.

‘Oh, yes, some of it is, some of it isn’t. Each text should be studied in isolation. And each will bear the stamp of the author and, if one knows how to look, the way it has been constructed will reveal its origins. But none of this concerns me currently. Tell me, there are hidden rooms, I take it? Sections where the public are not permitted?’

‘There are, yes. And I’ve seen that you have free access — if you have any more trouble I can help you.’

‘If I may be so bold, I doubt you will be able to help.’

‘Sorry?’ Fulcrom asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ulryk closed the book he was scanning and came close to Fulcrom. ‘Do you think, in a repository of knowledge, you will know where everything is kept? The power in such words is immense. There are barriers everywhere to stopping the uninitiated from accessing such information. Why, you yourself know that the citizens of the city are limited in what they can see in terms of political goings-on. Do you think that this isn’t a tiered system of access?’

‘I’d never thought of it like that, and I’m still not quite sure I follow.’

‘We had such a system back at Regin Abbey. Even most of our own clerics were not permitted access to the more sacred texts, and those who were could not read them. Barriers to knowledge exist everywhere — it is one of the greatest methods of information control.’

‘So what do you plan to do?’

‘Find what I am not allowed to find,’ Ulryk replied mysteriously. He picked up a book nearby, closed his eyes and inhaled the aromas from the leather and then flicked through to smell the paper.

*

Fulcrom decided to leave Ulryk to his personal crusade to find his book. He was experiencing a sudden doubt about what the priest had said concerning the history of religion. Against so many books, so many opinions, there was a lot to overturn, despite the magic that Ulryk had shown him the other day.

Keep an open mind, Fulcrom told himself. The moment you shut out the improbable is the moment you fail as an investigator.

Fulcrom stood at the top of the stairs waiting for another bout of snow to ease off. Footprints littered the courtyard like dark entrails, and at the far end of the glass flowers someone was in the process of being helped to their feet, presumably having slipped on the ice. The couple on the bench had departed. But something was out of place.

The soldier on guard… Fulcrom thought, looking around. He said, ‘Someone’s here day in, day out.’

Fulcrom walked quickly down the steps of the library and, to one side, he spotted a group of twenty or so people huddled in a close circle. Some of them were clearly in distress, and one man was holding back his young child from seeing something, but the kid kept pushing through the coats and robes to get a better look.

‘Stand aside,’ Fulcrom called out as he approached. ‘Villjamur Inquisition.’

As two women parted, Fulcrom squirmed through the circle to see a dozen expressions of disgust, a body on the floor, and a slick pool of blood under the head and abdomen.

It was the guard who had been posted on the library steps.

His throat had been severed in a clean cut, the sign of a professional, and there was an open wound from his left shoulder to his right hip. His sword still sheathed, his hands were stain-free: the man had probably not even seen his attackers, probably wasn’t even alive long enough to clasp at his wounds.

Fulcrom immediately called everyone back, but he knew it was far too late to find any footprints. The public had long since trampled on any clues. Shit.

Back to the body and blood was still pooling. This was recent, very recent.

‘Did anyone see anything?’ he demanded of the crowd.

‘Sorry, mate.’

‘No.’

Then nothing but shrugs and silence and morbid curiosity. He moved among them, searching for blades or a guilty glance, but nothing seemed out of place. ‘No one is going anywhere. I want you all to remain here so I can get statements.’

He ignored the following groans from those whose routines were about to be interrupted. People seldom looked at the bigger picture, even with the blood before them.

Fulcrom pushed through the throng and commenced jogging in a wide arc, his cloak floating like wings as he scrutinized the perimeter of the courtyard and between the glass flowers, staring through the falling snow to see if anyone was perhaps running from the scene or acting suspiciously.

‘Shit,’ he breathed, the word clouding before his face. Why kill a member of the city guard here? This was clearly meant to be seen as a statement, a signature in blood.

He headed back to the scene of the murder under the gaze of at least thirty people now, and noticed, tied to the stone rail of the steps, a black rag, the token of the anarchists. This confirmed his hunch.

As he ordered citizens all to stand clear, he drew out his notebook from his pocket then began to jot down the details of the crime and sketch the position of the body; and, with a deep patience, he began to interview members of the public.

Any serenity to be found in this garden of glass flowers had been shattered.