Worldsoul

Thirty-Nine

Darya’s transformation was over almost as soon as it had begun. The teeth drew back, the bone structure returned to human-normal. Mercy’s hand, clasping the hilt of the sword, relaxed by degrees. Darya bent and swiftly took a book from the lowest shelf, near the back. She gave the impression that she knew what she had come for. She placed it inside her ruffled jacket and went quickly from the library. After a moment’s consideration, Mercy followed.

She knew relatively little about the lives of the members of the Court. Unlike Librarians, and other functionaries, they were a closed order, living mainly within the Court itself and its satellite houses. Their initiation practices were a closely guarded secret and said to be grim, but everyone said that about their own initiations, with a kind of magical machismo, so it was hard to know what to believe. As with any closemouthed system, rumours about it were rife.

Still, during the years of the Skein, the Court had contributed substantially to the upkeep of the city, working in many instances alongside the Library itself and reining in the more elaborate or obtrusive stories. Several rogue bits of legend had been tracked down by Court magicians and stuffed back into their ontological places, in more than one case saving the city itself from disaster. There was known to have been some exchange of manuscripts.

With the disappearance of the Skein, matters had gone downhill to some degree. Mercy supposed that this was only to be expected: two powerful organisations, plus a power vacuum at the top, do potential chaos bring. But because she had not been involved with the Court directly, and because the Elders of the Library would naturally not be inclined to confide issues of higher policy to their underlings, she wasn’t entirely sure how far things had gone.

She pursued Darya at a distance through another maze of passages. She had quickly lost any ability to discern direction and the lack of windows did not help. Darya was, however, heading upwards and this was helpful, if only because it reassured Mercy that she was heading back towards the roof.

A few minutes later, Darya dived through a doorway and vanished. Mercy, hovering at the entrance of the door, was surprised to hear the sound of weeping, although it took her a moment to work out what this was. It sounded like a gull or a mewing cat rather than anything human.

She peered through the door. Darya sat on a low couch, her face buried in her hands. When at last she looked up, staring sightlessly at the wall, Mercy saw that her face was sliding back towards disir: she no longer looked human. Miserable Darya might be, but Mercy had no intention of having her throat torn out in a misguided attempt at consolation. She shrank back against the wall. The sobbing died away to a hoarse rasp like the sound of a saw, then silence.

Mercy once more looked around the corner of the door. Darya was lying on the couch as though she had been thrown there. The tight skirt had ridden up over her long, spiny legs and her hair was a tangle. She looked like a broken doll and if Mercy had found another woman like that, she would have suspected rape at the very least. But she was sure that there had been no one else in the room.

“Perra,” she mouthed. “Watch for me.”

The ka gave a single nod. Mercy slipped into the room, holding her breath. The book which Darya had taken from the library lay on the floor by the couch; it had fallen from her jacket. Her heart hammering, Mercy whisked it up and fled from the room.

At the end of the corridor she slowed, expecting to hear the disir girl coming after her, but the passage was silent. Perra murmured, “We are close to the roof. Do you see?” A narrow window above the landing showed a sliver of moon and a curve of stone: one of the eaves of the House of the Court.

Mercy exhaled. “Good. Let’s get out of here.”

She reached up and grasped the windowsill, then pulled herself up. After a moment’s grappling, she managed to force the window open. A gushing wind immediately rushed through. Mercy swore.

“Come on, Perra!”

The ka flowed through the open window and Mercy squeezed after it, turning so that her legs were dangling back into the stairwell. She eased herself out backwards, arching her back so that she was, for a moment, aware of a dizzying glimpse of the inverted city. There was the bulk of the Library, the domes of the Western Quarter and far away, the silver line of the sea. As she started to draw her legs up, there was a sudden blazing pain in her ankle.

“Shit!” Mercy kicked out. The pain decreased and, clinging to the frame, she went backwards out of the window. Her legs were now free, but razor sharp teeth sank into her hand. Mercy bit back a scream, mindful of an entire building full of Court magicians below and herself a trespasser. The thing that had bitten her also squealed, though a mouthful of flesh. She could see the thing: a hideous wizened face that was yet, somehow, in miniature her own. It had her wide brow and a flow of black hair. She didn’t have room to draw the sword. Instead, she wrenched her hand free in a spray of blood and whipped one of the sharpened pins out of her knot of hair. Her first stab at the thing missed as it dodged, but her second connected. She stabbed the thing through one eye and a terrible pain assailed her own.

“Damnit!”

Someone-probably Deed-had made a homunculus of her. When it hurt, so would she, and vice versa. But the alternative was to give into the pain, let the thing bite her fingers off and fall from the roof to the stone flags a thousand feet below. Not much contest there. Mercy drew a breath, gripped the windowsill as tightly as she could, whipped both books out of her jacket and stashed them on the windowsill. Then she rammed the pin through the homunculus’ brain.

The pain was too much. She heard it shriek as it shrivelled around the pin. The burn inside her head was overwhelming: it numbed her fingers and she let go of the sill. As she dropped past the upper windows of the House of the Court, mercifully, she blacked out.