Mountain of Black Glass (40 page)

Renie smiled politely and glanced at T4b, who was rubbing at his face sleepily. “We must take any help offered,” Renie said as Emily sat up, looking as groggy as T4b. “Should we bring everyone?”

“Do we dare separate?” asked Florimel.

 

Despite the fact that it was a large room, the abbot of the Great Library seemed almost too big for it, a wide man with small sharp eyes and a charming smile that came with surprising swiftness to his heavy features. But however nice the smile, after greeting them and waving Renie and Florimel over to his vast desk—the others stayed behind on a bench near the door—the man the other monks respectfully addressed as Primoris had not had much opportunity to use it.

“A terrible thing,” he told Renie and her companions. “We have labored hard to make our market a safe place for travelers. Now two people are waylaid in a week! And by one of our own acolytes, if what you say is true.”

“
Posing,
Primoris,” said Brother E3 hurriedly—Florimel's joke would now not leave Renie's mind, and she silently cursed the German woman. “Someone posing as one of our acolytes.”

“Well, we shall get to the truth of this. Here is Brother Custodis Major now.” The abbot lifted a meaty hand and beckoned. “Come in, Brother, and lighten our gloom. Have you found the young villain?”

Custodis Major, who although he looked to be in his sixties at least, still had a beard that was primarily red, shook his head. “I wish it were so, Primoris. There is no trace of him except some clothing.” He placed a small bundle on the abbot's desk. “Kwanli—that is his name—has been with us only two weeks, and none of the other acolytes know him well.”

“I belive that,” Renie said, “especially if they haven't noticed he's a woman.”

“What?” The abbot frowned. “This criminal is a woman? I have never heard of such a thing.”

“It's a long story.” Renie had not taken her eyes off the pile of clothing. “May we look through those things?”

The abbot spread his hand, granting permission. Florimel stepped in front of Renie and began gently to unfold the cloth; Renie swallowed her pride and let her do it. There was little enough to examine, a rough tunic and a pair of woolen hose raddled with small snags. “Those aren't what she was wearing when I saw her,” Renie said.

Brother Custodis Major lifted a bushy red eyebrow. “This is the Library, not the Gaol Halls, good lady, and these are not the dark days after the Upper Shelf Fire. My boys have a change of clothes so that when the fullers come, they can send their garments to be cleaned.”

“What is this?” Florimel held up her finger with a tiny chip of something white on the end. “It was in the cuff of the sleeve.”

Epistulus Tertius was the most nimble of the three monks. He leaned in, squinted, and said, “Plaster, isn't it?”

Brother Custodis Major was slower to speak. After examining the chip for a long moment, he said, “I do not think it comes from the Library. See, it is figured, and the only plaster we have here is on the flat walls in the Cloisters—the Library is wood and stone.”

Renie could not help clapping her hands together in fierce joy. “Something! That's something anyway!” She turned to the abbot. “Is there any way we could find out where it comes from? I know it's a big house, but . . .”

The abbot again lifted his hand, this time to forestall more questions. “I'm sure we can.” He lifted a fabric-covered tube from behind his desk and spoke into it. “Hello? Hello, Brother Vocus?” He lifted it to his ear; when no answer came, he shook the hose, then began the whole process over again. At last he said, “Someone has apparently left my speaking-tube disconnected downstairs. Epistulus Tertius, will you go and find Brother Factum Quintus? I believe he'll be cataloging in the Tile Halls today.”

The abbot turned back to the outsiders as the young monk vanished through the door. “Factum Quintus is our expert on decorative building materials, although his knowledge is by no means limited so narrowly. He has done some wonderful work on crenellations, too—he enabled us, in fact, to identify what were then called The Semicircular Apse Documents as being from another source entirely. When they are translated someday, his name will be memorialized in them.” His smile transformed his face like a fluffy cloud floating across the sky. “A good man.”

Renie smiled back, but inside she could feel her engine racing. She wanted to
do
something, and only the knowledge that Martine's life was in their hands helped her calm the unhelpful internal voice that demanded immediate action, whether appropriate or not.

Factum Quintus appeared at last, silent and sepulchral as the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Round-faced Brother E3 (Renie winced at the thought—it was starting to become automatic) stood huffing in the doorway behind him, as though he had been forced to carry the other monk all the way to the abbot's chambers on his back. Not that it looked like much of a job: Factum Quintus was quite the thinnest person Renie had seen in a long time, with a face like a fish staring head-on through the glass wall of a tank. He barely gave her and the others a glance, although she felt sure it was the first time he had seen a baboon in the same room with the abbot.

“You wanted me, Primoris?” His voice was as raw as a teenager's, although he looked to be in his early thirties.

“Just have a look at this, if you please.” The abbot gestured at the fleck of plaster that Florimel had set on the refolded tunic.

The skinny monk stared at it for a moment, his face almost completely empty of expression, then reached into the neck of his robe and withdrew a rectangle of thin crystal on a length of chain. He settled this on his nose like a pair of spectacles—there was a niche cut in the center for the purpose—and tilted it back and forth as he leaned over the white spot making little lip-smacking noises. After a long perusal he straightened.

“It is a bit of ballflower. Yes, yes. A patch, I should imagine, something to fix a piece of exterior carving from one of the older turrets.” He lifted the chip on his fingertip to examine it again. “Hmmmm—ah! Yes. Do you see the curve? Quite distinctive. Haven't seen one in a bit—fooled me for a moment. Thought it might be from one of those quoins they found when they stripped the Seashell Facade.” Hugely magnified behind the crystal bar, his eyes appeared even more piscine than before. “May I keep it? Like to have a look at the plaster mix.” He set it back on the folded clothes, then delicatedly licked the finger that had held it. “Mmmm. More gypsum than I would have expected.”

“That's all fine,” said Renie, speaking slowly to keep her impatience in check, “but can you tell us where it's
from
? We're looking for someone—that fragment was found in his clothes.” The abbot and Epistulus Tertius gave her a strange look over the reswitched pronoun, but Renie did not bother to explain. “We're in a hurry—this person has kidnapped our friend.”

Factum Quintus gazed at her musingly for a moment, his finger still pressed against his tongue, then abruptly turned and walked out of the abbot's chamber. Renie stared, aghast. “Where is he going . . . ?”

“Epistulus Tertius, will you follow him?” said the abbot. “He is a bit . . . distracted by nature,” he explained to Renie and the others. “That is why he will never be Factum Major. But he is extremely clever, and I am sure he is thinking about your problem.”

Moments later Epistulus Tertius was back at the chamber door, even more red-faced than before (and, Renie felt sure, growing increasingly sorry he'd befriended these strangers.) “He's gone to the crypts, Primoris.”

“There.” The large abbot sat back in his chair, like a piece of cargo in its stays. “He is looking for something to help you with your problem.”

An awkward silence fell on the room. The abbot and brothers Custodis Major and Epistulus Tertius, who should have been used to stillness, fidgeted and looked at the walls. Renie and her companions were no more at ease, except for !Xabbu and Emily. !Xabbu was doing his best not to appear too human, since they had not encountered a single talking animal in this simulation, and was currently perched on the back of the bench beside T4b's head, picking imaginary nits from the Goggleboy's skunk-striped hair, much to T4b's annoyance and the girl's amusement.

“If we're waiting,” Renie said, “can you at least tell us something about this place? How big is it? It seems huge.”

The abbot looked up and smiled. “The Library? Ah, yes, I suppose it is big, although there are only two other Libraries within pilgrimage distance, so we have little to compare it to.”

“No, I mean the house itself.” Renie remembered the sea of rooftops. “It just goes on and on like a city, from what I've seen. How big is it?”

The abbot looked to Brother Custodis Major, then back at her. “City. I do not understand.”

“Leave it alone, Renie,” said Florimel. “It doesn't matter.”

“How far from here until it ends?” Renie asked the abbot. God knew when they'd get a chance to have a normal conversation with anyone here again. “To the place where there isn't any more house?”

“Ah.” The big man nodded slowly. “I understand. You have had some religious instruction, perhaps? Or there are legends of such things in the part of the House you come from? No one knows what lies beyond the House, of course, because no one has ever seen it and returned to tell about it, just as no one has come from beyond death to tell us of what they found. Those who believe in the Lady of the Windows would dispute me on both counts, of course, but the House is full of strange ideas and cults. We of the Library Brotherhood are only comfortable with facts.”

“So it has no end? None at all? The . . . this house just goes on forever and ever?”

“There are those who say that the Builders are still out there somewhere, of course.” The abbot spread his hands, as though admitting an unpleasant truth. “They believe that at some unimaginable distance there is a place that is . . .
not-House
would be the only way I can explain it. That out at the very edge of things, the Builders are still building. But the Builder cults have diminished during my lifetime—a long stretch of peace and prosperity will have that effect.”

Before Renie could even begin to wrap her mind around the idea of a house that was an entire world—that literally had no edge, no ending—tall, skinny Brother Factum Quintus stalked back into the room, arms now full of rolled papers and parchments whose ends stuck out in all directions, so that he looked like a sea urchin on stilts.

“. . . It's actually very interesting when you think about it,” he was saying, as if he had never stopped the original conversation. “Most of our research in the Sanctum Factorum is about the original building of things—we have paid so little attention to the repairs, which have their own styles quite as fascinating and individual. Of course, there are records of some of the refurbishments, but far too few.” Unable to see past the parchments, he bumped into the abbot's desk and stood there for a moment, a piece of flotsam balked by a seawall. “Yes, yes. There is a monograph there waiting to be composed, a genuine gift to learning that could be made,” he went on, although everyone else in the room must have been invisible to him, but he had evidently started this monologue while by himself anyway.

“Brother Factum Quintus,” the abbot said gently, “you are babbling. Please put those down—the table is just in front of you.”

The scrolls cascaded to the tabletop like a pile of jackstraws. Factum Quintus' narrow, bug-eyed face was visible once more. He was frowning. “Ballflowers, though—those are also to be found in the Neo-Foundationist period ruins, and I worry whether we should consider those parts of the House as well. We would have no repair orders, though, since those early folk were evidently a people without letters or numbers.”

“I think we can dismiss the Neo-Foundationists for now,” the abbot told him. “Come, Brother, show these good people what you have found.”

Factum Quintus began unfurling his collection of documents, spreading one yellowed, curling sheet atop another and directing various onlookers to hold down various corners until the abbot's desk had entirely disappeared beneath an autumnal mulch of what could now be seen as building plans, working orders, and handlettered invoices. They spanned what seemed centuries, from naive illustrations margined by mythical creatures, without a single truly straight line in the whole drawing, to quite modern-looking blueprints with each duct and ornament carefully included.

The gawky monk was in his element, and kept up a running commentary as he leafed backward and forward through the layers. “. . . Of course that would be in the Sunrise Attics, several days away, and upstream at that, so it seems unlikely. But those repairs done to the Spire Forest could certainly qualify, and I'm sure . . . hmmm, yes, here, quite high gypsum content, so that's definitely possible.”

Renie stared at the great pile of documents. “Aren't you worried about something happening to them?” She thought the monks seemed rather cavalier for an order of book-protectors. “What if one of them got torn?”

“It would be a tragedy, of course,” said Epistulus Tertius, who had returned to his normal, albeit still pinkish, shade. He narrowed his eyes. “Goodness, you don't think these are the original documents, do you?” He and Brother Custodis Major shared a quiet chuckle, and even the abbot smiled. “Oh, no. These are copies of copies. Rather old, some of them, and still valuable, of course—even in this modern age it is difficult to make good copies of the original documents without risking damage.”