Chapter 2

Two

Kyrith

I t isn’t cowardice that keeps me away from the desk for the rest of the day. I’m just busy.

Or at least, that’s what I tell myself as I kneel beside an index card drawer in the Astrology Room, flicking ghostly fingers at the tiny cards to re-alphabetise them. On the way here, I floated through three patrons, making all of them gasp.

I’m told that the sensation is like having icy water thrown over your internal organs. But right now, I can’t bring myself to care because there is an Ackland in my Arcanaeum, and the longer he’s here, the more I want him gone.

Fortunately, the only patron who ever comes up here is in his usual corner on the far side of the room, his slender frame hunched over the book he’s cradling. He glances up occasionally, swiping the long curls out of his face as his eyes search for me, then returns to his book.

He’s the Arcanaeum’s biggest enigma. Another descendant of the six original families, but he seems to have almost nothing to do with the rest of them. In fact, he seems to actively avoid everyone, choosing to spend his time poring over the ancient and obscure divination books up here.

So much so that I’ve come to think of it as his room.

I gravitate here when I don’t want to be alone, but I can’t necessarily stand the isolating feeling of being amongst the patrons, either.

In all my years, I have never managed to bridge the gap that separates them from me. Even other liminals—rare as they are—don’t approach me or see me as anything other than a spectre. I’m respected, but also held apart.

Sure, I have the collectors—arcanists who search out and bring back new tomes to the Arcanaeum—but they barely communicate with me beyond what they’re paid to.

As far as they’re concerned, I’m a manifestation of the building. Not a person.

Sometimes I wonder if they’re right.

Maybe it’s my fault for never giving them a reason to believe otherwise.

“Librarian.”

I jerk back, falling through the shelf behind me in shock.

Galileo is crouched on my left, and likely has been for some time, but I didn’t even notice. I’ve heard him speak once or twice, but not enough to recognise his voice. Gathering my composure, I float back through the bookcase so I’m standing beside him.

“Sorry, I—Yes? Did you need something, Mr ó Rinn?”

He uncurls his body so he’s standing, and another spark of annoyance flares as I realise that he, too, looms over me.

What is it with arcanists and being so stupidly tall? I’ve half a mind to add low hanging beams to every room in the Arcanaeum. This close, I can pick out the deep ruby hints in the dark mass of his hair and the ice blue shards in his irises as he stares down at me.

He says nothing, simply stares and points a single finger at the ceiling.

One of my favourite features of this room is the ceiling. A magical mural of the celestial heavens above shows the exact positions of the stars at all times. But when I look up, there are no glimmers of light, only deep, mournful grey clouds.

Damn.

I wave a hand at the clouds, willing them to disappear, only to freeze as I hear familiar voices at the stairs.

“Up here’s where Galileo normally hangs,” Lambert explains. “It’s a bit of a useless room, really, but the ceiling is awesome.”

My spine stiffens further as North replies dryly, “It looks like it’s going to rain on us.”

“I doubt the boss lady would let that happen,” Lambert says confidently. “Even when she opens the botany room”—if I could, I’d grind my teeth together—“not a drop of rain gets on her precious books.”

He pauses, and I feel the wooden spiral staircase creak as they continue to climb. “No one else comes up here, and he basically lives in the Arcanaeum. If anyone besides the Librarian can find what your father wants?—”

“That man is not my father,” Northcliff grunts.

“If anyone can find what Ackland wants,” Lambert corrects himself. “Then it would be Leo.” He shortens the quiet arcanist’s name to just the last syllable—Lay-oh—with an easy familiarity that makes me bristle.

I cannot be expected to bear this twice in one day. Without waiting for them to appear and spot me, I will myself into non-existence.

To anyone watching, I vanish, but in reality, I’m still here, just…part of the furniture. Literally. I allow my awareness to seep into the Arcanaeum, and my ghostly form ceases to exist.

Sometimes this feels like resting—the closest I can get to sleep—but not now. Now it feels like spying.

I’m fine with that.

While I can’t bring myself to talk to either of them again, I can’t just allow them to wander around now that I know that they’re working for Ackland.

The two of them finally round the bookcase, spotting ó Rinn hovering awkwardly by my messy pile of index cards.

“North, this is Galileo ó Rinn,” Lambert introduces, slapping him on the back. “Leo, this is Northcliff Ackland.”

“North,” Ackland corrects.

Galileo is frozen in place, and his eyes widen as he finds himself caught off guard. “I haven’t met you before.”

It takes a while for me to get over savouring the rough edges of his accent—a tribute to his family’s ancestral home in Whiteabbey—and focus on the words themselves. He and North don’t know one another? In our world, that’s a rarity, especially given how powerful they are.

“He’s a liminal,” Lambert explains. “Josef’s half-dull bastard. Old Ackland took him in out of desperation.”

The part of me that isn’t absorbed by their conversation prickles at the use of the word ‘dull,’ and a book slides from a shelf without much prompting to slap Lambert over the head.

“Ouch! What the fu—? Sorry, boss!” Lambert calls, searching for me. When he can’t find me, he grumbles. “The walls have ears here, I swear.”

I know times have changed. The term is considered inoffensive now, just like so many profanities that would’ve been unutterable in my youth. Still, calling inepts ‘dulls’ does not sit right with me. It disrespects the wonderful hardworking people who raised me and the kind family I worked for before Edmund seduced me away with promises of magic.

The six families rarely bother with liminals anymore, although they cherry-pick those with the highest potential and bring them into the fold as a means to prevent too much inbreeding. It’s a stark contrast to when I was alive, when divinators were so desperate to bring our numbers back that they’d sometimes bring back liminals with barely enough magic to conjure a wisplight.

“Well, you shouldn’t use that word,” Galileo scolds mildly as he returns to his seat. “You know the Librarian doesn’t like it.”

As soon as the others follow him, the Arcanaeum reaches out and automatically tidies up my mess. Index cards fly back into the boxes, and the book which smacked Lambert shuffles back into place. It even polishes the brass finial shaped like an armillary sphere in the centre of the spiral staircase.

Lambert concedes with a wave of his hand. “Whatever. Anyway, North is looking for a book.”

“If the walls have ears,” North interjects, “then perhaps we should have this conversation elsewhere? What about lunch? Is there anywhere good nearby?”

Lambert snorts and rolls his eyes. “There’s nothing ‘nearby.’”

Thankfully, Galileo takes pity on him. “The Arcanaeum exists in its own little dimension. It has no physical location. We can leave through any door, and it will put us wherever we choose.”

“How about sushi?” Lambert starts towards a thin, wonky orange door in the corner, clears his throat, and raps on it with his knuckles. “Hachiko Square.”

He turns the handle, exposing the busiest meeting place in modern Tokyo, with the famous Akita statue easily visible beneath the city lights. It’s nighttime there, and without waiting for the others, he steps through.

I have never been more frustrated than when the door clicks shut behind the three of them. I’m tethered here, while they’re out there, plotting magic only knows what. Worse still, I’m now so on edge that even if I were to go back to my book, I doubt I’d be able to focus enough to finish it.

I’m tempted to give Northcliff Ackland a second strike for that crime alone. Does he have any idea how long I’ve had to wait for the right mood to strike so I could start that series?

Instead, I drift back through the walls, heading up towards my clock tower with an aggravated groan.

The four semi-translucent clock faces permit a misty light into my cosy little bolt hole, illuminating the knickknacks I’ve collected across the years on their carefully dusted stands. My bed is crammed into the space as well, in a private nook created by more shelves and guarded by thick velvet hangings. I don’t sleep, but it felt weird to have a room of my own without a bed in it. Plus, the cushions and soft blankets look inviting, even if I can’t touch them.

Around me, the heavy tick, tick, tick of the mechanical clock echoes, sparing me from the uneasy silence that is all too common in this place. Right now, it’s not soothing me. Instead, every heavy clunk echoes like a countdown to battle. Without meaning to, I drift over to the table in one corner and flick open the music box there.

It was a gift from the Arcanaeum itself. Sometimes, when I’m sad or lonely, the building conjures something new or even something familiar.

It isn’t just sentient, but capable of empathy. Something Ackland and his cronies could never have predicted. Would they have cared, even if they knew? I doubt it. They simply wanted more power.

They were playing with magic they didn’t understand and couldn’t control, and centuries later, the building and I are still discovering the consequences.

A gentle waltz tinkles cheerfully in the empty space, and for just a second, I allow myself to believe that this morning never happened. When I go back down into the library, there won’t be a file labelled ‘Northcliff Ackland.’ My peaceful un-life is exactly as it’s always been.

It’s a lie.

Something has changed, and North’s arrival feels like just the start of it all.