Arcanum (52 page)

One of them looked up, then sat up on his heels. “It’s Mr Thaler.”

He was an apprentice – Thaler couldn’t be expected to remember his name – but the boy greeted him like a son, until he was forced away by a Jewish spear.

“He’s our prisoner,” said Cohen.

“He’s our librarian,” objected the apprentice. “You let go of him at once.” The situation, with tired, angry men on both sides, momentarily threatened to get out of hand.

Thaler stepped between them, an outstretched palm directed at each man. “I believe we’re all on the same side here, gentlemen, and it’s painfully clear that we should not succumb to fissiparous urges, no matter the provocation. Librarians, you continue with your duties, and I’ll address you all in good time. Rabbi Cohen, our safety is your responsibility: you’re charged with bringing curfew breakers before the prince, so that’s what you must do, without delay.”

When he thought that tempers had cooled sufficiently, Thaler slowly dropped his arms back to his side. The apprentice lowered his brush and stood aside, gathering with his fellows in a sullen, mutinous crew.

Rather than have Cohen force him onwards, Thaler took the initiative and marched into the library on his own cognisance. This was his home, so why should he do anything else?

The prince was sitting at the long table, placed in its traditional position at the front of the circular space. On his left was Sophia Morgenstern, leaning her head towards him and listening intently. She had parchment and ink and pens in front of her. To either side were more librarians, patiently writing away by lantern-light.

Although the table had been restored to its rightful place, much had changed: the banisters had gone, and, apart from the shelves, there was no other furniture on the ground floor. All the reading desks and chairs had vanished. Thaler looked down at the freshly cleaned floor and decided that answers might have to wait.

His approach was noted, and the prince broke off his conversation and rose to greet him.

“Mr Thaler!”

“My lord,” said Thaler, and bowed low. “I am the bringer of good – no, excellent – news.”

The boy’s shoulders, broken and unbroken, seemed to straighten at his words. “I like good news, Mr Thaler. You and your men need to tell me about it straight away.”

“My men?” Thaler took the opportunity to prise the guildsmen and Ullmann from Cohen’s clutches and bring them forward. “May I present Master Prauss, Master Emser, Master Schussig, who met with a slight accident, and Mr Ullmann, an usher here at the library who has rendered assistance above and beyond his duties.”

“We need chairs for these men,” said Felix. “We need food and drink.” He looked through the group in front of him to the rabbi behind. “Thank you for bringing them to me, Rabbi Cohen. Your service has been noted.”

Chairs were found – from the first gallery – and Ullmann found himself persuaded to sit in the prince’s presence despite his reservations.

“We’ve had some problems,” said Felix, “and they aren’t over yet. Telling me we can get the water back on will go a little way to solving some of them.”

Thaler looked down the line, and found that everyone was looking at him. He lifted his hands in a gesture of exasperation, and said, “Yes. It’ll take a little while for everything to work perfectly. There may be unforeseen difficulties, but essentially, yes.” He rubbed at his chin. “Does my lord know of the huge cavern underneath the fortress filled with dwarven machinery?”

Felix blinked, looked down at Sophia, then back at Thaler, who pursed his lips.

“That’ll be no, then,” said Thaler.

“Under the fortress?”

“Master Prauss believes that’s where the cave is, my lord. There are staircases going up which we didn’t have time to explore, so we don’t know where they come out, but we presume it’s somewhere in the fortress.”

“A cave, under the castle, which no one knows anything about?” Felix sat down warily. “What do the machines do?”

“We don’t know exactly. Big wheels. Chains.” Thaler shrugged. “Master Schussig may have more to say on the matter, but our conclusion at the time was that we might need to go and ask the dwarves themselves.”

“Someone make a note of that,” said Felix. “How quickly can you get something working to show the people?”

They looked at each other again. Prauss judged their expressions. “A week, perhaps. We need a crew to dig, craftsmen to make good. The tunnel comes out beside the river near Grodig, under the Marktschellenberg. My lord, what’s happened to our families? We saw the bodies in the main square. We were arrested for curfew-breaking by Jews.”

Felix glared at Prauss from under his browline, and suddenly looked a lot older than twelve. Prauss subsided, and the silence grew longer.

“Master Eckhardt happened,” said Sophia. “We can issue you with a pass to travel through the town, but the north side of the river remains out of bounds, certainly if you value your life. If your family is home, then they’re safe. If they’re across the river, they’re outlaws, and you’re not to go looking for them. If they’re in the main square, then … you can claim the bodies.”

One of the scribes scraped his seat back and presented Prauss with a still-drying pass written in both German and Hebrew.

“Master Prauss,” said Felix, “all of you. Some of your friends, your family, your work colleagues will have gone over to Eckhardt. If you aid them, you defy me. If they want to come back, they have to come and look me in the eye first. Understand?”

There was a clear chorus of “my lord”.

“There’s food and drink waiting for you over there. You’ve served Carinthia well, and Carinthia forgets neither its friends nor its enemies.”

They stood, bowed, and started to walk away.

“Mr Thaler?” said Sophia.

Thaler stopped and, taking a moment to usher Ullmann on with the others, approached the desk.

“Miss Morgenstern.” She was sitting to Felix’s left, the position usually occupied by a royal consort. It seemed too deliberate to be accidental. Calling her Sophia in such a situation? There were shifts in power that Thaler would do well to track.

She reached behind her and laid the heavy library seal on the table in front of her. “This is yours.”

“It’s … sorry?”

“The master librarian cannot perform his duties. You’re the only remaining under-librarian.” She smiled hopefully up at him. “And it’s not like we have a surfeit of good men willing to risk everything for an idea.”

The seal’s engraved surface winked at him in the lantern-light.

“This would be most irregular,” said Thaler.

“Take the godsdamn seal,” growled Felix. “We spilt our blood here last night defending your books when we could have been behind the fortress ramparts. You know how this place works – now it has to do something. It has to teach us how to live.”

Thaler bowed his head. “I’m not worthy of—”

Felix grabbed the seal and thrust it at him. “I am the Prince of Carinthia and I demand you take this, even if I have to bury it in your belly.”

“That won’t be necessary, my lord.” Thaler held out his cupped hands, and Felix dropped the seal into them.

“Swear your loyalty to me.”

“By everything I hold sacred.”

It was good enough. Felix leant back, making the wood of his chair creak. “Go and eat, Master Thaler. Then assume your duties.”

Felix’s life was completely different, not just from what it had been before, but from what he’d expected it to become. He’d been transformed from someone who did nothing but play all day, into someone who did nothing but work all day.

Playing was the best way of describing what he’d done: training with the signore had had a purpose, but the purpose hadn’t been serious. No one had expected him to have to defend himself against anyone who might genuinely want to kill him. The fighting manuals he’d pored over were fictions. The two-handed swordplay was just that: play.

The riding, the hawking, the hunting of boar and bear and more exotic beasts, the music and the storytelling: everything he knew how to do well was little more than a game. And for what purpose had he been taught those things? So he wouldn’t get bored when he was prince, and wouldn’t engage in some stupid, reckless foreign expedition and risk the palatinate simply because he couldn’t bear the tedium a moment longer.

Other people were supposed to do the work. The chamberlain ran his household. The mayor ran Juvavum. The earls ran their fiefdoms. He needn’t lift a finger: his sole duty was to make sure the Order was given everything they wanted, and summon them at times of crisis. That was it: that was all he’d been expected to do, and had been trained for accordingly.

Trommler and Messinger were missing, probably dead. His earls, most definitely dead. The Order was – with two notable exceptions – gone. He couldn’t even tell who was on his side any more.

So there was all the work of fifty men falling on his broken shoulders, and very few he could trust to hand it on to. That would have to change. Right after he’d dealt with Eckhardt.

And if Peter Büber couldn’t persuade Mistress Agana to intervene, that was exactly what he’d have to do. Deal with Eckhardt. Something else his training hadn’t adequately covered.

In all the stories, the magicians – the good ones – had always won. Always. There were fragments of knowledge to be gleaned from the ways the heroes had battled with the villains, but more often than not it had come down to the gods being on their side. That, and raw power. He had neither the gods nor the brute strength required.

He narrowed his lips and looked over his shoulder at the rows and rows of books behind him. He remembered what Büber had said about them saving his life.

The librarians on either side of him were busy writing out orders and making lists. Sophia had gone back to the fortress to enlist some more Hebrew scribes. He was using the language like a code: his side could find someone to read it, Eckhardt’s side couldn’t. Felix was left sitting in the middle, scowling at everyone who asked him questions and already knew the answer. They were just requesting permission, really, but that they felt they had to do so didn’t make sense.

If he wasn’t there, would everything simply grind to a halt?

“You, man. What’s your name?”

“Wess, my lord.”

“Go and find Master Thaler, and bring him here.”

“My lord.”

As the man put down his pen and wiped his hands on his gown, Felix looked at him again. He had a cut on his head, barely hidden by his close-cut hair, and a dark line of blood had run down from it to behind his ear. He hadn’t manage to wash since last night, yet here he was, faithfully copying words and acting on instructions.

How could his father have missed this, this deep well of competence? Büber was even more right than he’d first thought. It wasn’t just the library that mattered.

A short while later – in that time, he’d taken three verbal reports and ordered the town wall gates to be closed and guarded rather than left wide open – Thaler appeared, looking groggy and damp. He, at least, had changed his lime-slicked, sweat-stained clothes and attempted a wash.

“My lord.”

Felix kicked his chair back and turned to face the library. “How is the old master librarian?”

“He’s best described as being in a state of pleasant delirium.” Thaler shook his head. “He may continue like that for years, but we’ll care for him.”

“Yes. Master Thaler, walk with me.” Felix stepped into the space where the reading desks had been, and looked up at the galleries and the dead globes that hung from the domed ceiling. When Thaler had joined him, he said in a low voice, “We have to get rid of Eckhardt.”

Thaler held up his hand, and motioned for the prince to follow him to a point away from the centre of the room. “If you stand there, my lord, the whole of the library can hear you. I don’t pretend to know how that happens, but it’s so, just as there are places on the upper galleries where a whisper will carry from one side to the other without seeming to travel through the intervening space.”

“Is that magic?”

“My lord, the library is – was – one of the least magical places in your palatinate. We were able to bring devices inside, like the lights and the magnifying lenses, but the walls were opaque to any form of magical interference. The Greeks had their amphitheatres for their plays, and the actors’ speech carried from the stage to the seats at the very back. A similar principle may apply here.” Thaler glanced over his shoulder, checking for eavesdroppers. “If we didn’t insist on silence in the library, no one would be able to work.”

“Getting rid of Eckhardt?” said Felix.

“Quite. An endeavour I can wholeheartedly support.”

“Is there anything in any of these books that will help us? Histories, legends? A group of brave men tackling an evil sorcerer?” Felix reached out and dragged randomly at the spine of a book in a way that made the new master librarian wince. “Anything in this one?”

Thaler gently took the book from his hands and tapped on the cover. “This is a treatise on geography by Pomponius Mela. It won’t help us at all.” He reshelved it and stood with his hands on his hips. “I’ll have to consult with the other librarians.”

“But haven’t you got a list of your books, and what they contain?”

“You mean the Great Catalogue, my lord. One day, gods willing, we’ll finish it.”

“You don’t know what you have?” The notion astounded Felix. “How can that be possible?”

“Previous generations simply collected, conserved and copied manuscripts, and no systematic attempt had been made in years to collate a library catalogue until, I think it was ten years ago. We have a made a start—”

“Not good enough!” shouted Felix. His voice echoed, and the murmur of voices elsewhere drained to nothing.

Thaler’s face clouded. “There are at least a hundred thousand individual books, scrolls, monographs and pamphlets housed here. Perhaps twice that number: only Alexandria in Egypt can boast as many, and they keep on catching fire, so gods only know how they catalogue theirs. My lord, simply caring for these works takes a good deal of time, as does copying those which appear to be beyond saving. Then there is the collecting of new works, copying those, and training in a dozen or more languages … if we had more librarians, we could have done better.”