Chapter 25

He's gone.

My brother stood watching as Librarian's heavy body staggered back, the quicksilver liquid that gave him life gushing out through the open cavity of his chest. He stumbled back once—twice—struggling to regain his balance.

Librarian stood a moment longer, lifting a hand toward Cabell, letting it hang in the air like an unspoken question. Then, with a harsh clatter, the automaton's body finally collapsed, quicksilver seeping from every joint. Finally the rattle of his struggling limbs stopped, and he was still.

As Cabell stood there, his face impassive, that same wrenching thought returned to cut me again and again. He's gone.

The brother I'd grown up with, the one who had been sensitive and funny and prone to dreams … He hadn't been chained by Lord Death's magic. He'd been free this whole time. Every decision … every life lost … he'd done it knowingly.

And the pain I felt was unspeakable.

Lord Death placed an approving hand on his shoulder. Smoke rose, spreading its delicate fingers up through the floorboards around us, seeking. Through the haze, I saw Cabell and the others escape.

I pushed up from the ground and ran for the door. Neve, at least, seemed to know exactly what to do .

She planted herself at the entrance to the central chamber, facing the radiating heat of the magic flames. Her spell sang out, as strong as it was unhesitating. The sprinklers had done nothing to halt the fire's path, but as the priestess spread her arms, the flames seemed to acknowledge her, standing at attention.

They might have been sparked by death magic, but it was Neve's magic, drawn from the Goddess's source, that smothered them. The fires went out with a last gasp as she drew her hands sharply together in front of her.

The moment the raging heat abated, we ran through the choking cloud of smoke and the maze of worktables for the windows at the back. Coughing, I struggled with the lock leading out into the fire escape; its metal warped with the heat.

"Botheration," I gasped out, picking up a nearby chair and throwing it through the glass.

Whatever wards had protected the guild library had only protected it from outside threats, I thought bitterly, not those coming from inside. The terrified library cats clustered around my feet until, finally, they were able to jump out onto the fire escape and flee into Boston's dreary winter.

"Wait!" Neve stuck her head out of the window to call after them. "Come back! You're indoor cats and those are mean streets!"

The thought of them out there, without any true shelter, was just as sickening to me as the sight of the smoldering black clumps that had once been books.

I dropped down onto my knees beside Librarian, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth. The death magic painted his bronze body with cruel silver stripes. For a moment, I didn't know if I should even touch him. What the point would be.

Those with magic believed the Goddess would allow them rebirth in another life, in another form. Even the vilest souls among us experienced a second dark existence, in a different world. The promise of their deaths was life .

But what of those beings like Librarian, for whom death wasn't merely the first step of another journey, but an end? How could he have been so morally upright, so pure of intention, and never be reborn, simply because he didn't have a human soul?

How could he just … cease to be?

Maybe I'd been the biggest fool of all, believing, in my desperation for some sort of parental figure, that an automaton was capable of things like love. It was equally possible that Librarian had merely seen Cabell and me as an extension of his duty to the guild, and to the library itself. Small nuisances who were worse-behaved than the cats and harder to keep fed.

Maybe I'd imagined a life that never really existed at all. But it had been real to me.

My eyes burned from the smoke and lingering heat. I stroked my fingers gently down Librarian's arm. For the first time that I could remember, it was warm. And even though I knew that was because of the fire, it let me keep pretending, just for a moment longer.

But then a voice, small and fading, rose from inside his ruined chest. "Young … Lark …"

"I'm sorry!" I cried. "Please don't go. Please, tell me how to fix you."

"… I have chosen … one you will … enjoy …," he said, his voice flickering like a guttering candle. "… It will be … such a pleasure … to sit and read with you … beside the fire … once more …"

Librarian fell silent, and did not speak again.

"Tamsin?" Neve knelt behind me, touching my back.

One of the nearby shelves buckled, sending charred Immortalities and atlases of the ancient world tumbling to the floor. Neve winced at the noise, but I barely heard it. It felt like the smoke had wrapped me inside a mantle of my own and nothing could penetrate its numbing touch.

"Do you … do you have a bottle?" I asked, swallowing hard. "Just a little one?"

"I'm sure I do," Neve said. "Why do you need it, though? "

The idea already felt stupid, but somehow, hearing myself say it aloud made it seem childish too. "I want to preserve some of the quicksilver. The death magic."

"What are you talking about?" Neve asked.

"The death magic," I said. "It's all over him. You can't see it?"

Neve shook her head.

My earlier conversation with the Bonecutter came back to me in a rush. I'd tried to ask her why only I could see death magic in its physical form. She'd told me to ask Nash.

"Are you thinking that it may contain some of his memories?" Neve asked. "Some part of his essence?"

"I don't know. Maybe." I shook my head. My thoughts no longer felt clear, and it was too much effort to try to understand them. "Is that stupid?"

Neve gave a sad half smile. "Not at all. We'll go get our things, and then we can leave when you're ready."

I'd seen so many ruins in my life, it hollowed me to my core to look around the library and see that it had become yet another one.

The rich wallpaper, the ornate rugs, the worktables that had borne the weight of countless books, were all scorched black. The loss of knowledge contained in this collection was staggering. Even if I dedicated my whole life to it, I wouldn't have enough years to transcribe their contents from my own memories.

Ash and scraps of burned paper fluttered by me as I collected as much of the silver liquid as I could stand to. While I worked, Neve combed the shelves, searching for any injured cats. As I rose to my feet, a new feeling rose in me too.

The library had been our only true sanctuary in this great, vast world. It had been a place to escape to, to travel from, to learn, to be alone with one's thoughts. Inaccessible to the outside world, it had been safe. It had been ours.

And Cabell had led his master right to it.

He'd turned his back on me, on all of us. He'd stood by and watched as others died and had done nothing to help them. The truth was agonizing in its clarity now, and I felt foolish and ashamed all over again.

He wasn't under the sway of Lord Death's magic, and he was never coming back.

When the anger came, I welcomed it. I let it fill the part of me that had held on to forgiveness, let it burn my hope away until it joined the ashes at my feet.

Because the next time I saw my brother, I would make him pay for what he'd done.

"Tamsin?" Neve called.

I found her in Librarian's closet of an office, somehow mercifully untouched by the spread of the fire. She was bent over an open book there, one I recognized by the stained edges of its pages. The covers were two sheaves of oak bark with a layer of living moss coating them.

It was one of the earliest known records of the hidden magical world within Great Britain, and one of the Library's oldest tomes.

I have chosen one you will enjoy.

Neve shifted, allowing me to squeeze in beside her. My eyes strayed to Nash's empty coffee cup, with the faded CATCH OF THE DAY restaurant logo, left just beside the historical record on the desk. A slow, simmering fear began to build in my gut.

"Look," Neve said, drawing my attention back to her. She was braver than I was, running her finger down the open page. The brittle paper was torn in places, as if insects had eaten away at it. The whole thing seemed like it would disintegrate if I dared to breathe in its direction.

In the illustration, a woman in long, flowing robes stood at water's edge, brandishing a sword above her head. Light billowed around her, and in the dark shadows bordering the scene, I could just make out monstrous faces.

The first words beneath the illustration had been lost to a tear and an inkblot, but the rest was still legible. While the One Vision could translate the words, it was still difficult to parse the writer's old-fashioned, spidery hand.

"Something something … light of the Goddess drives out the plaguing darkness. As the first priestess and protector of the isle, the Lady of the Lake wields the divine Caledfwlch, the mirror of mortality, judge and executioner of the pitiless wicked, savior of the ensorcelled, and the mercy of the innocent. "

I leaned in closer to the page, holding my breath. A woman's face, ever so faint, was etched into the light radiating from the Lady of the Lake. The Goddess herself.

"The mirror of mortality," Neve repeated, visibly fighting to keep her hope at bay. "You don't think … I mean, it fits with your theory that it reflects you at the moment of your death … ?"

I let out a light, breathless laugh. Being forced to learn the other languages had taught me to think about the changing meaning of words over time. "Mortality can also refer to humanity as a whole. The mirror of humanity. Of beasts."

"Then we just have to find it," Neve said. "This … Caledfwlch."

"It's better known by another name," I began, feeling some of that hope drain from me. Our already difficult quest to stop Lord Death had just become that much more impossible.

Neve's lips pressed together, her eyes questioning.

"We call it Excalibur," I said. "And it's been lost for centuries."