Painted Devils, page 10
“How far is it to the outpost?” I ask, squinting through the window, only for an arm to reach past me and yank the curtains shut before looping around my waist.
“I don’t care,” he mumbles into the side of my neck, and a moment later, neither do I.
There’s a nagging worry at the back of my skull—I’ve had to make do with rustic washstands for four days, and I know I smell and my hair’s dirty and you could scrape enough oil off my face to fry a schnitzel—but that certainly doesn’t seem to slow him down at all. I wind up awkwardly straddling his hips as he keeps a steadying hand near the base of my spine, and damn if it doesn’t feel amazing every time the carriage lurches and his grip tightens, and every time we break apart, laughter spilling into the gap before we close it up again.
Eventually the coachman has to knock on the door to let us know we’ve arrived. He’s unsuccessfully hiding a smirk as we stumble out in a flurry of straightening hems and fixing buttons. “Will you be needing a return ride to the Book and Bell, sir?”
Emeric looks to me, half sheepish, half hopeful. “I think we could use the walk?”
“We could,” I confirm, adjusting the strap of my satchel to better sit over my coat. I suffer no delusions that, once we get back, Kirkling won’t resume her one-woman crusade against youthful canoodling, and I’m determined to manage at least one more respectable indiscretion beforehand.
Dänwik’s outpost of the Order of Prefects of the Godly Courts isn’t too different from the one in Minkja: a neat little stacked-stone affair among a handful of chapels that make up in grandeur what they lack in numbers. There’s a faint chime as Emeric pushes the outpost door open, revealing a simple, well-furnished reception area almost uncannily alike to the one in Minkja, down to the winding hallway opposite us. There’s no one at the polished walnut reception desk, but a voice calls from beyond the hall, “A moment, please!”
Emeric pauses beside me, tilting his head, and mutters, “Vikram?”
Then a smile breaks across his face as a man bustles into the room. The man looks about Helga’s age, with warm brown skin, hazel eyes, and loose dark curls pulled into a haphazard knot at the top of his skull, in the fashion some Surajans favor. He’s cleaning what appears to be soot from his hands with a rag, utterly oblivious to both the streak of soot emblazoned across his uniform’s waistcoat and the holes scorched into his rolled-up sleeves. A dark jacket is draped over his shoulders. What looks like a blackened jeweler’s loupe on a chain is bouncing against his chest, and there’s a distinct clean circle around one eye, where it seems he took the brunt of the soot.
He barely glances our way, digging under his nails with the rag. “Apologies, there was a slight issue with a small fire the size of, well, a large fire, and—”
“Vikram,” Emeric repeats.
At that, the man—Vikram, clearly—blinks at us for the first time, his thick eyebrows cresting like a wave at the top of his forehead. Then he promptly throws his rag at Emeric.
“Conrad, you convenient little weasel,” he says, with a delighted kind of outrage. There’s an unnerving current of relief below, though, when he follows with “Thank all the gods you’re here.”
“Thank you for that.” Emeric plucks the rag off his chest, his nose wrinkling as he brushes away a faint trace of soot. For most people, hitting Emeric with a dirty rag would be the beginning of a very bad time for them, so the fact that this Vikram is still intact says quite a bit. “I thought you were finishing your mastery certification at Aederfeld.”
“Mathilde and I have a temporary assignment here. The Northern Artificers’ Guild is negotiating their ten-year contracts with the Merchant League, and Prince Ludwig specially requested impartial arbiters.” Vikram gestures at the clerk’s empty desk, like I’m supposed to understand any of the words he just said. “Mathilde’s from Rammelbeck, so they sent us. She’s at the convention now with our clerk, Linn, but with the Library of the Divine closed, they’ve had to send out for—”
“The Library of the Divine is closed?” Emeric interrupts.
“Yes, for the past week. It’s too dangerous to let anyone in.”
Emeric and I trade looks. “On a scale of one to immediate disembowelment,” I start, “how dangerous are we talking? Because that library’s at least half the reason we’re here.”
Vikram purses his lips. “Closer to immediate disembowelment than not,” he admits, “but I’m rather hoping you can fix it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
CRYSTAL AND GLASS
Emeric opens his mouth, and I can see the gears in his head creaking into motion. I know what happens when you give him a puzzle: He’ll drop everything until it’s solved.
I cough. “We’re actually here to register me as a consultant, so maybe that first?”
Vikram starts, as if he forgot I was here. “Oh! Sure. Er, I think I know where Linn keeps the forms…” He produces a sheet of parchment from a cabinet and slides it over the counter to me, along with a quill. “Fill out everything except for this bottom section, and sign on this line, not that one—that one’s for the authorizing prefect. Conrad, I’ll catch you up on the library situation in a moment. What the devil are you doing here, though? Last I heard, you were still in Helligbrücke, pining over some floozy.”
I look up from the form, startled enough to keep from laughing. “Oh, was he?”
Vikram doesn’t bother hiding his own smirk. “Apparently he met her on a big case over midwinter and spent all of January—”
“Vikram,” Emeric starts tightly.
“—and most of February looking out the nearest window and sighing.”
“Vikram.”
“I heard it got so bad, he wrote poems.”
I pause in the middle of drawing a pair of gleaming buttocks under Please list any specialized or relevant skills and glance sidelong at Emeric. “Poems, plural?”
He’s beet red. “Will you just fill out the form.”
“Was this the Minkja case?” I ask innocently, adding stink lines to the butt. “I’ve heard about that one.”
Vikram’s face lights up. “It was. Wildest file I’ve read in years. The whole order was in an uproar that a wee junior prefect brought down the margrave of Bóern by himself.”
“I had significant help,” Emeric protests.
“Entirely on his own,” Vikram continues blithely, ignoring Emeric’s muttered “Again, incorrect.” “Completely unaided, particularly not by some mysterious absent floozy.”
I scoot the form over to Emeric along with the quill, resting my hand on the parchment for strategic buttock concealment. “Sign, please.” He obliges me, scowling at Vikram the whole time. I push the completed form over to Vikram.
“Thank you, Miss…” His eyes land on my name and widen.
“It’s me,” I say serenely. “I’m the floozy.”
His mouth purses for a beat. Then Vikram says, with a remarkably straight face, “Conrad, you didn’t tell me she was an artist.”
Our eyes meet. In that moment, an unspoken ironclad alliance is forged, and I know we are a united front with the sole objective of haranguing Emeric.
“What do you mean—” Emeric cranes to look at the form and sees my creative contribution. “Vanja.”
A heavy and official stamp thuds onto the bottom of the page before he can swipe it.
“Entered into record April third, 761 Blessed Era,” Vikram says briskly, whisking the parchment away. “Now let me grab a decent coat and you can see this library problem for yourself before it gets dark.” He vanishes down the hall again, only to thrust his head back out. “Oh. Miss Schmidt, I’m Vikram Mistry, journeyman research officer for the Order of Prefects of the Godly Courts. You’ve probably figured out the ‘Vikram’ part on account of Conrad saying it so much. Lovely to meet you.” He disappears again.
“I’m shocked,” I say to Emeric. “I thought the first rule of your prefect charter was I solemnly swear to keep a stick up my ass, permanently, no takebacks.”
“Article One is ‘A prefect is bound to investigate and resolve any case they are assigned by their superiors, to the full extent of their ability,’ and you know that,” he grouses. “Vikram and I were in the training academy together. I wound up taking the track for field investigators, and he went into the research and engineering division. He was one of the few people who would actually spend time with a ten-year-old know-it-all.”
“We were both little outcasts.” Vikram returns, pulling on a heavier uniform coat, much like Emeric’s but embroidered in striped black-and-white trim instead of silver. “Him for being a literal infant, me … Well, some of the Almanic cadets had strong opinions on a Surajan joining their ranks. Any path to authority is going to attract bullies, and the prefects are hardly an exception. Lot of spares-to-the-heirs who saw a little smartass and a son of silk merchants as safe targets.” He holds the door open for us with a wink. “Hence why I was also the first person to teach this lout how to throw a proper punch.”
“Which was great,” Emeric says darkly, “until I got stabbed.”
Vikram rolls his eyes. “What eleven-year-old hasn’t been stabbed, honestly.”
Emeric turns to me for backup, and I hold up my hands. “Don’t look at me, Junior. I did very much try to drown you.”
“Ah, romance,” Vikram hums. “But wait—‘Junior’? I thought you’d be fully ordained by now.”
I pull a face. “It’s a nickname. If I call him ‘Aspirant,’ I sound like Kirkling, and I think that’d traumatize us both.”
“Kirkling is your proctor?” Vikram whistles. “High Gods and Low ease your way, friend. What’s your Finding, then?”
Emeric provides a recap as best he can, including Kirkling’s embargo on what I’m allowed to know, as we wind through the lanes of Dänwik. Our path slopes gradually upward as we pass manicured hedges and tidy little street markets. They’re mainly for tourists, given how many stalls hawk souvenirs, from novelty stoneware mugs to wooden toy ducks and somewhat incongruently elegant glass goblets. As we walk, a set of sharp steeples starts poking over the rooftops, marking a building at least as large as the prinz-wahl’s hunting lodge. The closer we get, the more popular the goblets become, with vendors shouting something about replicas.
“What’s the deal with the glassware?” I ask, only to realize I’ve fallen a few steps behind Emeric and Vikram.
“… weren’t many signa available when I did it, but I picked the Alembic,” Vikram’s saying as I catch up. “Seemed fitting. Did you take up the Oak from Klemens?”
Emeric shakes his head. “Hubert was always adamant I follow my own path, so I chose my own signum.”
“Your what?” I pipe up behind him.
Both boys look back at me, chagrined. “Stop neglecting your lady,” Vikram scolds.
I make a noise of indifference but am secretly delighted when Emeric hurries to loop an arm around my shoulders. “What’s a signum?”
“It’s part of the second contract mark.” He ducks his head. “I can show you when we get to the Book and Bell.”
Considering he has to be shirtless to do that, I find the idea extremely motivational. “Right. So. This library problem isn’t going to take long, is it?”
Vikram sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Ah, we’ll see soon enough. Some particularly nasty grimling got into the Library of the Divine last week, and it’s been attacking anyone who sets foot inside ever since. The Merchant League and the Artificers’ Guild are blaming each other since they can’t access the spell registry for negotiations, and neither Mathilde nor I have the field prefect training for wrangling grimlingen.”
The Library of the Divine begins to fill in under its steeples as we draw nearer, looming even larger than I’d originally thought—and too large to be unprotected. “Shouldn’t there be a kobold to keep them out?”
“The library has its own guardian entity called the Armarius. Some kind of spirit or the like, I don’t know.” Vikram shrugs. “I do gadgets, not ghouls. But no one’s seen the Armarius since this all started. A few local hedgewitches and warlocks have tried to put the grimling down with no luck either. It’s not enough of an emergency to call in backup, but since a field prefect happens to be in the neighborhood…”
“Prefect aspirant,” Emeric and I correct at the same time.
Then he pulls a face at me.“Oh no, that’s horrible. It really does make you sound like Kirkling.”
“But if I use ‘Junior,’ it’s going to bother you, since it’s outdated.”
Vikram grins. “She does know you.”
We turn a corner, and the full bulk of the Library of the Divine breaches our view for the first time, crouching, ancient, at the crest of a hill. Unlike most of Dänwik’s prim and posh façades, it’s a monolithic granite gargoyle of a building that predates the others by at least two centuries. Baring fangs of turret and spire and collared in blocky trim, its darkened windows leer like dozens of vacant, hollowed eyes. The double doors are shaded by a massive ribbed archway, and the lane ends at the front steps, imparting the impression of a lolling stone tongue.
“As you can see, huge tourist attraction,” Vikram drawls.
I spy a padlock on the door as we approach, one unlike any I’ve seen—for starters, there are two keyholes instead of one. “I’m not sure I can pick that. At least, not fast.”
“No need.” Vikram flashes a key ring. “I made it. But”—he correctly interprets the excitement that sparked in my face—“I would love for you to take a crack at it later. Always room for improvement.”
Vikram makes me turn around while he removes the padlock, “just to preserve the mystique,” but Emeric stops him before he can push the doors open.
He eyes the dark windows warily. “There’s no need for you two to put yourself in harm’s way. I’ll—”
“Handle the grimling while I search for your records,” I finish.
Emeric sees the stubborn jut of my chin and sighs, then turns to Vikram, who’s donned a similarly obstinate frown. “I suppose there’s no convincing you either. But…” He winces apologetically. “Vikram and I should find the records, to avoid any issues. Vanja, you can be our lookout. You’ll notice if our luck’s turning.”
I squint at him. It sounds like a flimsy excuse, but it beats waiting outside. “Sure.”
Emeric squares himself to the arch, lays a hand on the oak, thinks better of it, takes a step back, and prods one door with the inexplicably spotless toe of his boot. It swings inward with an arthritic creak, and all three of us freeze, bracing for a monstrous onslaught.
Nothing happens.
Emeric runs a hand through his hair. “Vikram, tell me this isn’t a very elaborate joke—”
The door slams shut so hard, it rattles on its hinges.
“It is not,” Vikram deadpans.
A line appears in Emeric’s brow. (It’s actually a little cute, but I don’t feel like that would be a helpful observation right now.) He reaches for his belt and draws a dagger, plain but for the copper coating on the blade. It’s one of a prefect’s set of five, the others being gold, silver, steel, and iron; they’re each wrought to be effective against different sinister things, but I always forget which. That is, save for copper. Copper I saw enough of in Minkja to remember: best against grimlingen.
Emeric’s lips move in some sort of incantation, and a gust of silvery light wrenches the doors open, straining against an unseen force. “Hurry.”
The doors bang closed again moments after we three scuttle inside, snipping off the last umbilical of light until Emeric digs out his prefect coin and ignites it.
Vikram is also scrounging in his satchel. “Hold on, I’ve been working on something … Here.” He emerges with what looks like a fistful of marbles, only to toss them into the air. They kindle with the same colorless light as Emeric’s pewter coin and hover around us like a cloud of sedate but extremely potent fireflies, casting an easier, wider glow than the coin’s.
Emeric whistles in appreciation. “How is that not standard-issue already?”
“Single use, and lasts only five minutes for now,” Vikram says. “Save your dirty jokes, Mathilde’s already made them all. Let’s go get your records.”
Emeric holds up a hand, peering beyond the light. “Do you see anything, Vanja?”
I look around, a smidge baffled. We’re in a foyer of sorts; pale light glazes over stone columns and a vaulted ceiling embellished with an iron chandelier long gone cold. There are signs of a hasty exit everywhere, from scattered papers and abandoned cloaks to a forlorn porcelain doll swooning at the foot of a statue. The statue itself bears only the inscription THE FOVNDER on the base, but judging from its old-fashioned robes, I’d say it’s meant to be a friar, the kind who goes by something like Sextus and entirely deserves it.
I don’t know what Emeric expects me to find, but nothing’s leaping out. “No.”
We pause for him to quickly consult the floor plan and directory posted on a nearby wall, then head into the library itself. Given the size of the building, I expected it to be separated into different chambers. Instead, the only partition is a ring of waist-high walls that section off something like an open-air rotunda at the main floor’s center. That area’s crowded with chairs and sturdy tables, some still bearing open books, parched inkpots, and half-written notes.
Radiating out from the rotunda’s rim is a towering forest of cylindrical columns—no, not columns, bookshelves, like massive tree trunks with scrolls and manuscripts for bark, rising all the way to the chandelier-dotted ceiling three stories above. Each one is spiral-bound with spindly staircases, and ruffs of narrow balustraded walkways offer brief respite before the next steps climb higher. Most of the shelves are bare above the second story, a few patches of books and scrolls clinging like lonely barnacles, but there’s clearly room for the various collections to grow.
“This way.” Emeric cuts an unyielding line across the rotunda, allowing only a wobble or two for avoiding furniture. “Vanja, you’ll have the clearest vantage in the middle. We’ll be just over at that section.” He points to one of the nearest columns. It’s still far enough away that I won’t be able to see what he’s searching for.
