The Palace of Glass (21 page)

Alice shook her head, running out into the yard without bothering to fetch her coat. Ashes kept pace beside her, for once not complaining about the snow. They ran together to the bronze door of the library, and Alice wrenched it open, hinges squealing in protest.

For the first time Alice could remember, Ending was there in the anteroom, yellow eyes ablaze.

“You felt it too?” Alice said.

Ending nodded. “Something,” she said, “has gone very badly wrong.”

LIGHTING A BEACON

B
UT THE SPELL
WORKED
,
”
Alice said, putting a hand on
The Infinite Prison
. The disconcerting buzz had vanished. “It's holding. I can feel it.”

“It worked,” Ending said. She padded back and forth, more agitated than Alice had ever seen her. “The problem is that
everyone
felt it. Geryon must have had a personal ward I didn't know about. When it collided with the spell, it radiated energy on an incredible scale. The very fabric of the labyrinth itself seems to have been affected. An old Reader could sense power like that on the other side of the planet. My brothers and sisters are contacting me to ask what happened. When I don't have a good answer for
them, they're going to come and investigate. And half the library is going mad.”

Ending looked over Alice's shoulder, eyes distant as she felt the weave. “Every creature on the other side of a portal is trying to get through, and some of them are succeeding.”

“What do we do?”

“You'll have to speak to them.”

“
Speak
to them?” Alice said. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Reassure them,” Ending muttered. “They are gathering right now, and Ashes should be back in a few moments with Mr. Black.” Ending had summarily dispatched the cat back to the house the moment Alice and Ashes had appeared in the library.

“How am I supposed to reassure anyone?”

“I don't care,” the big cat snarled. “Think of something. A few jittery sprites are hardly our biggest problem right now! It won't be long until the other Readers respond. I'm trying to stall . . .”

She vanished into the shadows with a swish of her ebony tail. Alice turned and saw that the aisle she'd come down now led to a large open space among the
shelves, in which a crowd was already gathering.

It was certainly the
strangest
crowd Alice had ever seen. No two people in it were alike. A tall gentleman in an elegant dark suit, expertly tailored to accommodate his six arms, stood beside a smoke-belching clockwork spider. A young woman appeared to be melting, her form sagging and indistinct. Several variations on the basic theme of sprites—thin, gangly humanoids with colorful eyes and hair—stood in a group, glaring daggers at one another. In the back, a lion with a human face and a crocodile tail sat in a prim, Sphinx-like pose that reminded Alice of Ashes when he was being particularly difficult.

Ashes himself arrived just as she'd nerved herself to step out in front of this bizarre multitude, with Mr. Black, Mr. Wurms, and Emma on his heels. The cat dashed out in front of the crowd and over to Alice, and she scooped him up and set him on her shoulder.

“What did Mother say?” he whispered.

“She told me to
reassure
them,” Alice said. “But something else is happening. I think she was talking to the other labyrinthine.”

“This lot doesn't look happy,” Ashes said.

That seemed to be the case, inasmuch as Alice could read their expressions. In the front row, an older woman
wearing a dress made entirely out of bones and wire stood with her arms crossed and her jaw set. Beside her, a very old hunchbacked man leaned on a stick, while the glowing mushrooms that sprouted from his back flashed angry-looking colors. The girl beside him didn't look older than ten, sporting a red-and-white-spotted mushroom cap in place of hair, but she seemed equally worried.

“And I just . . . talk to them?” Alice whispered.

“You're the Reader's apprentice,” Ashes said.

Not if the Reader has any say in the matter.
Alice suppressed a hysterical giggle. She walked, stiff-legged, out to the front of the crowd and raised her hands for silence. The chattering creatures quieted down, more or less, except for the clockwork spider, who couldn't seem to help her clanking and steaming.

“Um,” Alice said. “Hi. I'm Alice, Geryon's apprentice—”

“What in the name of Ushbar is going on?” said the bone woman. “Someone lit off enough power to
wake the
dead. Where's the Reader?”

“He's—” Alice's eyes found Mr. Black, who was staring at her suspiciously. A number of other creatures burst out with “Yeah!” and “What happened?” and Alice had to raise her voice.

“Geryon has vanished,” she said. “He was investigating a book, and there was some kind of accident.”

The spider-thing extended a small screen, composed of a grid of tiny spinning paddles, black on one side and white on the other. These whirled madly for a moment before settling down to form black text on white. ACCIDENT = FALSE. PROBABILITY: ENEMY ACTION.

“She's right,” the melting woman said in a gloopy voice. “If Geryon's disappeared, it's probably some trick of one of the other Readers.”

“It doesn't matter
why
he's gone,” the bone woman said. “What are we going to do? The others will find out soon enough, and then it will be open season for anyone under Geryon's protection.”

“I'm sure Geryon will be back soon—” Alice said.

“Really?” the bone woman snapped. “I'm not. If Anaxomander or someone has got him, he's in for a rough time.”

“Regardless,” Alice said, trying to regain some control over the situation. “The others can't
know
that he's gone, not for sure. They'll move cautiously. And I'll work to make sure they don't find out—”

“You?” sang the lion-crocodile-man in a beautiful bass baritone. “What are
you
going to do?”

PROBABILITY: APPRENTICE INADEQUATE, the
spider's screen displayed. INFERENCE: SITUATION DESPERATE.

“We're doomed,” one of the sprites said, turning wildly in a circle as though excited at the prospect. “Doomed! Doomed!”

Alice tried to say something, but the rising babble drowned her out. She waved her arms frantically, but no one was paying her any attention.

“
ENOUGH!
”

Ending roared the word, a feline growl that cut through the noise and echoed back from the distant ceiling. All the creatures went silent as the labyrinthine stalked out beside Alice, eschewing the shadows. Her coat was so black, it seemed to drink in the light. Muscles moved underneath like the rise and fall of mountains. Her teeth were long and white, ivory fangs the size of daggers. The paw that came down beside Alice's foot was as big as a catcher's mitt.

“The girl is all you have,” Ending said with a snarl, “whether you like it or not. You can trust in her, or you can start running away now. But shouting at her isn't going to help.”

There was a long silence, broken only by nervous exhalations of steam from the spider.

“I, for one, am running,” said Mr. Black.

“I expect nothing better of you,” Ending said.

“You're bound to serve Geryon,” Alice said. A week ago, she would have been happy to see him disappear, but at the moment she felt like she could use all the familiar faces she could get.

“Geryon won't be back,” Mr. Black said. “Even if he can eventually get free, the others will pick this place clean long before then. There's nothing keeping me here.”

He turned his back on the gathering and stomped away, his footsteps ringing loud in the quiet that followed.

“That's all well and good for him,” the bone woman said. “But some of us have family and friends on the other side of those portals.”

“Then stay,” Alice said. “Please. I'll figure something out, I promise.”

PROBABILITY: LOW, said the spider. She paused, then added, ALTERNATIVES = {}.

“For now,” Ending rumbled, “go back to your books and stop causing
more
trouble. Geryon may be gone, but
I
am still here.”

With a general muttering and whispering, the gathering dissolved, slipping back into the aisles and corridors of the library.

Mr. Wurms came up to Alice as the others were leaving and ducked his head respectfully. “I will go back to my table and get on with my work,” he said. “You have my full confidence.”

“Thank you,” Alice said, willing to take what she could get at this point.

“If any of the other Readers do take over, though, perhaps you could mention my record of sterling service?” He attempted a smile, which, given the state of his teeth, was a ghastly sight. “Just in case.”

“If I get the chance,” Alice muttered.

“Good,” Mr. Wurms said, patting her on the shoulder. “Full confidence, though.”

He wandered off, leaving only Emma, who waited blankly as always for someone to give her an order. Alice sighed.

“Emma, go to the kitchen, make up a basket with some sandwiches and bottles of water, and bring it back here. Then go back to the house and wait.”

Emma nodded and hurried away.

“I get the feeling,” Alice said, “that we might not get the chance to break for lunch any time soon.”

“It seems unlikely,” Ending agreed. “The first apprentice has already arrived.”

“Already?”

“It's your little friend with the back door and the disreputable jacket.”

Isaac.

Ending sent Alice to an intersection among the shelves where Isaac was waiting, hands in the pockets of his battered coat. When she stepped around the corner, he grabbed her in a fierce hug. This took Alice a bit by surprise, but not nearly so much as it did Ashes, who was dislodged from his perch on Alice's shoulder and jumped to the floor, clawing Isaac's ear as he went by.

“Ow,” Isaac said.

“Serves you right.” Ashes sniffed. “You should give some warning when you're going to engage in such gestures. Perhaps you could be equipped with an air horn.”

“I . . .” Isaac turned his gaze from the cat to Alice. “I'm just glad you're all right. We felt the power surge, but we didn't know what happened.” He caught Alice's expression. “You
are
all right, aren't you?”

“For now,” Alice said. Her hands tightened. “Geryon is gone.”

Isaac's eyes widened. “Gone? You mean he's dead?”

“I don't think so,” Alice said. “But he's trapped.”

“That's not good,” Isaac said. “One of the others must have slipped something through his defenses. I hadn't heard anything from my master, but maybe the Eddicant or—”

“It wasn't any of the others,” Alice interrupted. “It was me.”

“What?” Isaac said.

“What?”
Ashes said, from the floor.

“I set a trap for him,” Alice said. She was surprised at how calm her voice was. “It worked. Except it wasn't supposed to let everybody in the world know what I'd done.”

“Are you
crazy
?” Ashes said. “Where in all the worlds did you get the idea—”

“How did you do it?” Isaac said.

Alice explained, giving an abbreviated account of her journey to find
The Infinite Prison
. It felt good to finally tell all her secrets, especially to Ashes. Isaac knew some of them, but she'd been hiding the truth from the cat, since he wasn't particularly good at keeping secrets. He also didn't take the revelation particularly well.

“You're mad,” he said. “You've gone mad. There's no two ways about it.”

“Your mother was the one who helped me,” Alice said.

“Then she's gone mad too. Do you have
any idea
what's going to happen?”

“The other Readers will move in on Geryon's territory,” Alice said. “They'll tear the library apart.”

“I mean, do you know what they'll do to
you
?!”

“Honestly, I don't,” Alice said.

“
Neither do I,
” Ashes said. “Because it's the kind of thing that, when you do it to someone, they're
never heard from again
.”