Page 54 of Play of Shadows
What a colossal waste of time this turned out to be, I thought, staring down at the stack on the little reading desk and cursing whoever it was who’d left the scholar’s mark for me in the first place. Then my eyes landed onThe Garden of Majestyagain. I flipped through the pages once more, examining the orchid drawings, but there was nothing hidden there that I could see. Only when I gave up and closed the book did I notice the discreetVol. Iinscribed at the bottom of the spine.
‘Have you any more books by Sigurdis Macha?’ I asked an elderly librarian stationed at the centre of the concentric colonnades of polished oak shelves. ‘Specifically, the second volume ofThe Garden of Majesty?’
The hawkish-faced woman at the desk glanced up with a smile that faded when she got a look at me. ‘Students given the privilege of entering the library should know better than to expect others to do their work for them.’
‘I’m an actor, not a—’ I stopped, doubting she cared about such distinctions, and instead unpinned the ebony and gold brooch from my collar and handed it to her.
If the warden had been dubious about my right to be here, the librarian was positively disgusted. ‘Fucking noble Houses,’ she swore as she turned it over in her fingers. ‘Which wastrel lord gave you this in payment for sucking his cock? Or was it a tip from some bitch damina for licking her arse pleasingly?’
She tossed the mark back at me before turning away to begin digging through the huge leather-bound registries. After a minute of angry flipping, she informed me, ‘Sigurdis Macha was a barely literate smut merchant who probably needed four drinks to string three words together. No doubt why he wrote only one book.’
My heart sank. Macha had been the only writer of the periodto offer something more intriguing than grandiose praise and platitudes.
‘. . . which he split between two volumes,’ the librarian added.
‘Wait, what? So thereisa second book?’
‘Volume,’ she corrected me, squinting at her leather-bound registry. ‘Yes, here we are:The Court of Flowersby Sigurdis Macha.’ The librarian rolled her eyes. ‘Someone should’ve told that talentless hack that writers of satire have a solemn duty to avoid pretentiousness.’
I reached for the registry. ‘The second volume– it’s really calledThe Court of Flowers?’ But before I could see the listing myself, the librarian wrenched the registry back, the curl of her lip suggesting she wasn’t above biting a patron’s hand, should the need arise.
‘Try that again and I’ll call the wardens and have them tear off both your arms and toss them out the front door,’ she warned, adding, ‘Hardly worth losing a limb over a book so banal that no publisher would waste the paper on it.’
I stared at the worn volume in my hand. ‘You’re telling me I’m holding Sigurdis Macha’soriginaljournal?’
The librarian tapped a finger on the listing in her registry. ‘Which should tell you how worthless it is. Says here that after Macha’s death, the text was declared seditious and not to be reproduced on pain of imprisonment.’
My fingertips drifted across the cracked leather. The cover had probably been as green as emerald a century ago, but time and handling had stained it a darker, forbidding olive colour. Something about it was oddly familiar, although I was positive I’d never seen it before.
‘What about the second volume, then?’ I asked the librarian. ‘Where can I findThe Court of Flowers?’
She gestured dismissively towards the aisle that led to a wide marble stairway guarded by one of the wardens. ‘According tothe registry, the second volume is in the restricted section. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up. The wardens will flay you alive and use your skin for vellum before they let some pissant viscount’s prostitute mount those stairs.’
I let the insult go and pinned the brooch back on my collar. ‘I suspect this might smooth the way.’
She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I couldn’t care less either way.’
I was about to leave, but curiosity made me hesitate. ‘You’re very free with your thoughts on the nobility. Aren’t you worried someone might report you?’
One corner of her mouth rose in a smirk. ‘You think I fear those toothless wastrels and their overfed bodyguards? More likely I’ll wake up one night to find the Pin standing over my bed with his poignard already buried in my throat, or someone’ll spread a rumour I’ve got foreign blood and the Iron Arseholes will crown me with spikes through my skull, leaving me hanging from my own balcony for passers-by to ogle as the blood seeps from my eye sockets.’
‘You’re not frightened of either possibility?’
‘Look around, rent-boy. The good God Death has more than his share of ways to feed his hunger these days.’ The old woman pulled the neckline of her shirt just low enough to reveal a mass of bulbous red sores. ‘The Scarlet Waste, they call it. Feels like rats crawling under my skin at night. It’s not contagious, so they let me continue working here. I’ll be dead long before anyone bothers to arrest me for some trumped-up crime or another– and long before you’ll get to see that book you’re after.’
I was awed by this woman, so pragmatic in the face of such a horrific and surely fatal disease. ‘I’m sorry, my Lady,’ I said at last. ‘I wish you a peaceful passing.’
That earned me a halfway genuine smile. ‘I imagine my death will be as peaceful as any soul may hope for in such troubled times, gentle whore. As peaceful as any of us deserve.’
Chapter 26
That Which Glitters Brightest
I’m not one of those people who can bend others to my will. Never having known the influence that comes from being born into wealth, I was enjoying the prospect of pointing to a brooch on my collar and having men of violence bow and scrape before me.
‘What do you mean I can’t enter?’ I demanded, tilting the scholar’s mark so that the gilded edges would catch the lantern light. ‘I’ve got a gold pass!’
The senior warden guarding the restricted floor offered up what could best be described as tolerant disdain. ‘Gold gets you in the library once a day. Don’t let you into the restricted athenaeum.’
