THE LIGHTNING IN THE EAST

BARU’S tongue stuck to her palate when she breathed.

The Liminal Library had been built to die. Carved into rock down below sea level, its air had to be parched by chemistry lest it rot the books; and if invaders struck, the library would flood. The Throne would not give up its secrets. Lanterns of iridescent jellyfish tea cast blue-green light on concrete buttresses, long chains in catenary arches, the marching monoliths of the shelves. The air was dry as bonemeal.

In the distance, red hair and pale skin caught the light for a moment.

“There you are,” Baru breathed. “Keep my parents’ letters, will you?”

She slipped down the shelves toward Apparitor. It was so silent in the Library that she heard quite distinctly when he raised his head and said, “Oh, shit.”

She broke into a sprint. His footsteps vanished suddenly but she was learning, and she had an easier time with sound on her blind side—she cut right between two shelves, lunged, and tackled him as he dashed past. He dropped his sack, and they went down together on the stone in a papery explosion of letters and books.

Dingy rag novels poured over Baru. She picked up the book that settled on her neck and read the title: Intrusion from the Pointillist Plane! “What the fuck is this?”

Apparitor tried to scoop all his spilled books away from her. A Reckoning of Archons! Nab Banadab and the Horror of Canduûn! I Summoned Antideath! All on the same rag cover dyed cheap yellow. One of them bragged, in red letters, of Impossible Truths from Behind the Moon’s Silver Mask—You’ll Wish You’d Never Known!

“Are these codebooks?” Baru cried, delighted. “That’s ingenious.” A short-run novel would be a wonderful source of spice-words for encryption.

“I just like cosmic mysteries.” Apparitor scooped everything up with bashful haste. “Well, do enjoy your mail catch-up, I’m sure no one will be offended you’ve been ignoring them for three years.”

Baru stabbed him with a smile. “At least my family knows where I’ve gone.”

“Fuck off,” he said, looking nervously around. “You haven’t told Farrier, have you?”

“Of course not. They really don’t know?”

“Not most of them.”

A sheaf of cream paper in a gold-cloth band fell out of a book. Apparitor froze. Baru grabbed for the sheaf, very curious. Her half blindness didn’t keep her from reading: if she couldn’t always quote the right half of the page, the general meaning still reached her—

Apparitor stamped on her fingers. “That’s not for you.”

Baru wrung her hand. “A letter to your lover?” she said, just to prickle him. “You want to keep him up to date on your failures?”

“Hardly, hardly; Lindon and I keep our love out of our politics. This is nothing you’d care about, believe me.”

“Tell me, then, if it doesn’t matter.”