The Sister drew out a pinch of purple powder. “This is deathsleep, girl. It’s best swallowed, but inhaled will do.” She held the powder to Sara’s nose. “This will keep her asleep while she heals. Now, come close. We’ll start by cleaning these wounds.”
The figure on the bed became the center of Emma’s world. They sponged and sewed, set and splinted, until her eyes were as heavy as her hands. But hour by hour, Sara slipped away from them.
“Enough,” the Sister said eventually. Her face looked gray, the eye patch digging into her wrinkles. “We’ve done all we can, for now.”
It took a moment for the sensation to travel from Emma’s tired brain to her fingers. They were starting to cramp around the mortar and pestle. Freeing them, she joined the Sister in her vigil by the bed.
The sound of the door opening made them both start. Emmarecognized the labored breathing even before she saw the Librarian. The Sister tugged a dusty book from his grasp.
“How does the child?” He approached the bedside. A misshapen hand, like a gnarled tortoise, crept toward Sara’s face but never touched her.
“You found it?” The Sister’s wrinkled face was alight. She leafed through the book with swift fingers. “The regular cantrips only did so much, and I remembered something in this volume that… Ah! Here it is. The vervain preparation. We’ll try this next.”
The Librarian shut his eyes, as though to ward off a memory. “So cruel. Such cruel punishment.”
Emma saw the moment when something changed in his face. It was like a ripple crossing a pond. His eyes popped open, as vague as Emma had ever seen them.
“I must leave,” he said to the air, with some surprise. “How did I come to be here? The book is lost, I cannot spare this time…”
“Oh, Henry.” The Sister reached for him, but he shuffled past, eyes fixed on a point invisible to all but himself. The sound of his mutterings trailed away down the corridor.
It was not the first time Emma had seen the vagueness take him. It had been the same in his study, when he’d been about to talk of his “return.” An escape story, she had hoped. To the mortal world or back again. But she hadn’t followed the thought to its logical end. Whatever journey the Librarian had made, the Sister might well have been with him. She would not let her brother go into danger alone. And the Sister had no fits of vagueness. She might answer a question, if it were put to her.
Emma considered how to start. Lightly, she thought. On a safe topic. “Were you very fond of Sara?”
“Barely knew her.” The Sister emptied a jar of roots onto the worktable and started chopping. “But I have seen what the City does to those who displease it. I have learned how to help. Not always enough.”
A tear trickled from under the eye patch. The Sister caught her looking.
“I am an old woman, Emma,” she said, creasing her face into a wicked smile, with some effort. “They tell you incontinence starts and ends with the bladder, but the eyes are just as bad. Just you wait.”
“You were like Sara, weren’t you?” Emma said slowly. “The Night City hurt you. It did that to you. Your eye.”
The Sister made a half-hearted movement, as though to cover her eye patch.
Emma thought again of the Librarian’s mangled fingers. “And your brother’s hands.”
The Sister shook her head. “It is a bad story, girl.”
Emma pulled the book toward her. “I can work as you talk. Please.”
The Sister looked deep into one of the candles.
“The England of our youth was one of carriages and ballrooms,” she said. “My only destiny, or so I thought, was to marry. A gentleman of rank and fortune, an estate. My brother was an artist, and my favorite person in all the world. He painted things of great beauty from his studio near the University, rising in renown and riches.
“Until he disappeared. He told me once of a strange magic that summoned him.
“‘There is a power in this place,’ he had said, looking not at mebut through me. ‘It fills these streets with beauty. I try, but paint cannot capture it.’
“Then he stooped to pick up one of his smaller canvases. It showed a rear aspect of the Library. A door peeped from behind swathes of creepers. ‘If I am gone, little sister, it will be here. They have told me the way. Just through this door, a place more wondrous than any we could imagine. A land like the tales of old.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps Queen Mab may take me as one of her own.’
“But I did not believe him. Not until he was gone. Then, I believed. When my parents told me, I slipped to the stables and took my dear old horse, Bess. I did not stop until we reached the Library. There I found the door, just as in Henry’s painting. To open it, I made my own bargain. Fool as I was, in my innocence, I swore I would give anything for my brother’s safe return. Thinking I might lose my pretty fan, or my favorite horse. Instead, the City took my youth, and Henry’s, as price for the crossing, and sent us ragged into the streets of the mortal world. Wrinkled as we were, none recognized us. We were barred from our home. Worse, things were not right with Henry. He could not bring himself to paint. He said it was as though the mortal world were washed of color. His body had left the Night City, but his mind did not. I watched it drift away from me, day by day.
“And so I made another bargain, to bring him back. But the City was angry with us. For it had loved him. Unlike so many others, Henry had not been forced into a collar or a Lower House. No, the Night City had taken him straight into the heart of its Court. The City prizes great minds and talents, you see. It likes to take them for its own, those special mortals. And Henry was special. With his genius and skill, he painted the Night City with its trueface. He showed its beauty. And for such a favorite to leave all the City’s wonders to return to the mortal world—it was a betrayal. To be taken back, we had to submit to a cruel price. I lost this eye. Henry, the grace of his hands. Now, he cannot even hold a brush. But we became members of the Night City, even if only at the outer fringes. We are exiled to walk between the mortal world and the magical one. And so we have been given charge of the Library, to watch over it and every generation of mortals that comes to its doors.
“Mine is a lowly enough role. I have no title. But my brother is the Librarian. Even in disgrace, I believe the City cannot forget the love it once bore him. Above all others, it chose him to guard its most precious place, and the knowledge within. My brother is happy, if not entirely whole. He sees the beauty of the City, and I know it comforts him. He cannot paint, but he smiles again. Some things are worth the sacrifice.”
“You make it sound like it happened long ago.”
