Part 12 (1/2)

”You saw how things are around here last night. If you want to stay, you have to work in the Stacks. That was the excuse I gave for your being here.” He gave her a quick smile. ”Look, I want you to stay. I told you that last night. I want to have someone to talk to.”

He hesitated. ”Okay, it's more than that. I don't want to talk to just someone someone. I want to talk to you. I like you.”

She almost blushed, but not quite. ”Well, I don't mind being your sister if that's what it takes for me to stay. But don't you have to get permission from His Eminence?”

”Oh, sure. But he'll agree. He likes beautiful things, so he'll like you well enough.” He faltered, apparently realizing what he had just said. He brushed nervously at his mop of dark hair. ”We can go see him after you've finished eating.”

”I'm finished,” she announced, and she stood up.

He took her back out of the kitchen and down the hallway past all the doorways to the servants' rooms, including her own, until they were back in the front anteroom where the big desk fronted the two huge closed doors. Only now the doors were open, and Thom led her through.

She stopped short when she saw what was there. They had entered a cavernous chamber with ceilings so high she could only just make out ma.s.sive wooden support beams standing out in stark relief against the shadows. The floor of the room comprised huge stone blocks on which rested hundreds upon hundreds of shelves, row upon row running left to right and back into farther darkness. The shelves were each perhaps twenty feet high and connected by rails on which rolling ladders rested. Books and papers of all sorts were crammed into the shelves and stacked on the floors and dumped in piles in the aisles. Although there were windows high up on the walls on either side, their gla.s.s was crusted with grime and dust and cobwebs, and the natural light was reduced to a feeble glow. Usable light emanated from more of the tiny flameless lamps she had seen in the hallways earlier, these attached in pairs at the ends of the shelves, their yellow glow almost, but not quite, reaching to the center of each shelving unit.

”The Stacks,” he announced. ”It's kind of a mess up here, but better when you go farther in. We've been working back to front and from the middle outward. Don't ask me why; His Eminence ordered it done that way. So those parts are cleaned up and organized.” He paused and looked at her. ”It's a big job. You can see why we need help.”

She could, indeed. As she was thinking that the number of workers necessary to clean up this mess was not a handful, but hundreds, a pair of the Throg Monkeys emerged from the gloom between the stacks, hunched over and conversing in low tones. When they caught sight of Thom and her, they abruptly turned around and disappeared back into the gloom.

”That's the way they are,” Thom advised. ”They do their level best not to be found so that they don't have to work. They are very good at it, too. Every day, I have to hunt them down and herd them over to the section we're working on. It takes up a lot of valuable time.”

She kept staring in the direction of the vanished Throg Monkeys, thinking how creepy they were. ”How many of them are there?”

He shook his head. ”Don't know. I keep trying to count them, but I can never get them all together in one place. There are a lot, I know.” He frowned. ”It seems as if there are more all the time, but I don't know how that can be-unless they're breeding, of course, but I've never seen any evidence of that. Fortunately.”

He grimaced. ”However many there are, there aren't enough since only a small percentage of them ever do any work. The only thing I can trust them to do is lift and haul; they're hopeless at organizing and filing. I keep telling His Eminence that we need better help to finish this job, but he never does anything about it.”

He gave her his loopy grin. ”But now we have you-my little sister, Ellice. Things are looking up!”

She gave him a grimace of dismay. ”How long have you been at this?”

He looked skyward for a moment. ”Oh, about three years now.”

”Three years? Three whole years?”

The loopy grin returned. ”Well, it's slow going, I admit. But His Eminence seems satisfied. Come on. Let me introduce you.”

”Wait!” She held up her hand to stay him. ”What am I supposed to do when I meet him? What should I say?”

”Oh, that's easy. You really don't have to say much of anything. His Eminence will do all the talking. You just have to play along. Remember your lines. You are my little sister, Ellice. We live in a little village at the south edge of the Greensward called Averly Mills. When I introduce you, bow to him. Always address him as 'Your Eminence' or just 'Eminence.' Can you do that?”

She could if she had to, though she didn't much like the idea. But she held her tongue. ”Does he have a name other than 'Eminence'?” she asked instead.

Thom gave her that familiar shrug. ”He says his name is Craswell Crabbit, but I think he made it up. It doesn't matter because he won't allow us to use that name anyway. Only 'Your Eminence' will do.”

”Is he a n.o.ble of the Kingdom? Is that why he insists on being addressed as 'Your Eminence'?”

Thom beckoned with a sweeping gesture of his arm, directing her to follow. ”Come with me. You can decide for yourself.”

He walked her down the right side of the Stacks and along the far wall until he came to an ornately carved oak door, scrolled with all sorts of symbols and runes and edged in gilt. At the very center and right at eye level was a sign that read: HIS EMINENCE.

Knock Before Entering The letters, also outlined in gilt, fairly jumped off the polished wood of the door. Directly below was a huge metal knocker resting on a metal plate. It looked to Mistaya as if it would take a fair-sized battering ram to knock the door down if it was secured.

Without hesitating Thom lifted the knocker and let it fall once. A silence followed, and then a rumbling ba.s.s voice replied from within, ”You may enter, Thom.”

How the inhabitant knew who it was who'd come calling was a mystery to Mistaya, but Thom seemed undisturbed and pressed down on the door handle to release the latch.

The room they entered was large but not cavernous, and it in no way resembled the Stacks. Here the wood was polished to a high gloss, the walls decorated with paintings and tapestries, and the floor laid with rich carpet. The ceiling was much lower, but not so low as to make it feel as if it were pressing down, and there were slender stained-gla.s.s windows at the rear through which suns.h.i.+ne brightly shone in long, colorful streamers. A ma.s.sive desk dominated the rear center of the room, its surface piled high with doc.u.ments and artifacts of some sort. His Eminence sat comfortably behind it in a high-backed stuffed armchair, beaming out at them with a huge smile.

”Thom!” he exclaimed, as if surprised that it was the boy who had entered. Then he stood up and held out his arms in greeting. ”Good morning to you!”

Mistaya didn't know what she was expecting, but it wasn't exactly this unbridled display of camaraderie. Nor was Craswell Crabbit quite what she had envisioned. Sitting behind his desk, he looked fairly normal. But when he stood up he was well over seven feet tall, skeletal beyond simply lean or gaunt, a collection of bones held together by skin and ligaments. As if to emphasize how oddly thin he was, his head was at least two sizes too big for his shoulders, an oblong face suggesting that the obvious compression it had undergone hadn't been quite enough to make up for the job done on the body. Because his legs and arms were rather crooked, even given the oddity of the rest of his body, the whole of his appearance was something rather like that of a praying mantis.

”Good morning, Your Eminence,” Thom replied promptly. Rather quickly, Mistaya thought, he led her forward to stand before the desk. ”This is my sister, Ellice.”

”Ah, what a lovely child you are, Ellice!” the spider enthused, reaching out with one bony hand to take her own.

”Your Eminence,” she responded quickly, letting the hand he held hang limp as she gave him something between a bow and a curtsy.

”Come for a visit?” he pressed. ”All the way from ... ?”

”Averly Mills, Your Eminence,” she answered smoothly.

”Yes, that is the name. I'd forgotten.” He smiled. ”Missing your brother, are you?”

She noticed now that his head was shaved of hair, but fine black stubble grew over his bald pate and along the smooth line of his angular jaw in a dark shadow that refused to be banished. His sharp eyes locked on her own, and she could feel them probing for information that she might not wish to give.

”Yes, Your Eminence,” she answered. ”I thought perhaps I might be allowed to remain with him for a time. I am willing to work for my keep.”

”Oh, tut, tut, and nonsense!” the other exclaimed in mock horror. ”We don't treat our guests that way!” He paused, c.o.c.king his head at her. ”Then again, we are short of helping hands just now, and our library reorganization clearly lacks the concerted effort it requires. Why, if not for your brother, we might not have made any progress at all!”

”Ellice is a good worker,” Thom cut in. ”She can read and write and help me with the organizing. She would be an immense help.”

”I would be pleased to do whatever I can,” Mistaya affirmed quickly, trying out a smile on him.

His Eminence looked charmed in his praying-mantis sort of way. ”How very gracious of you, Ellice! I would not ask it of you, but neither will I refuse the offer. You may begin work at once! Please consider yourself a part of our family while you are here. Thom, has she met everyone?”

”Mostly, Your Eminence,” the boy answered. ”Pinch last night, some of the Throg Monkeys today, although I don't know which ones or whether they even care. Not all of them, I'm sure. They seem to multiply daily. Anyway, thank you for allowing her to stay with me. I miss her every bit as much as she misses me.”

”Well, I am certain you do.” The oblong face tilted strangely, as if about to fall off its narrow perch. ”Though you've never once mentioned her before, have you?”

Mistaya felt a chill go up her spine. But Thom simply gave that familiar shrug. ”I never thought it important enough to speak about, Your Eminence. You have so much else with which to grapple that it never seemed appropriate to talk about myself.”

The tall man clapped his hands. ”How very thoughtful of you, Thom. Indeed, you never disappoint me. Well, then. You've had your breakfast and taken a look around, Ellice?”

”Yes, Your Eminence.”

”Then I shall not keep you a moment longer. Your brother goes off to work and you must join him. We shall visit again, later. Goodbye for now.”