Captive Magics

39 - The Visitor

After three weeks in his new job as librarian, it was astonishing to answer the visitor's bell at the front of the library and find that the person waiting was someone he had never met before.

"Good afternoon," he called cheerfully as he rounded the corner, and then his brain recalculated when he realised it wasn't Martha or Beans. Instead the person waiting in the shadowy hall was a tall, sharp-faced young woman with dark hair pulled back from her pale face in a tight bun.

"Yes, hello. Where's Nutte?" She asked, appraising him.

"No idea," replied Leander, taking her card. In truth, he still didn't have a clue what Nutte spent most of his time doing. "I'm Leander." Her card introduced her as Gilla Beckhard, which was useful because she evidently had no intention of introducing herself.

"I know. Teckirrion told me," she said dismissively. "I don't need you to show me around: I know the way." Turning for the heart of the library, she lit a witchlight in her hand with a fizzing sound and Leander grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Sorry – safety lamps only, please," he told her, handing her a lamp. Two pale fingers hooked the ring of the lamp from his grasp and she threw him a look of intense irritation, stalking into the library in a flutter of robes as he tidied away the visitor book.

With a sense of disappointment in his new acquaintance he followed, in time to watch her push past a stack of books to get to room three. The stack wobbled. It leaned. Panic surging, Leander leapt forwards and steadied it, a few stray books at the top flying past his ear. He grappled for a moment, righted the stack, and cursed himself for overreacting just as the reception bell rang.

"Just a minute," he called. Gilla watched from her chair as he scrambled on the floor for the lost books. It would be just his luck, he thought as he got to his feet, if Teckirrion arrived.

There was the faintest noise of fabric rumpling, folding and dragging through the filmy layer of dust across the floorboards. Leander replaced the last books on the stack, his mind alighting briefly upon the sound, moving on in distraction, then returning to it again as he noticed how out of place it was. Anywhere else he would have thought nothing of it, but in the library every sound could be accounted for, and it wasn't him or Gilla. He glanced towards reception with the jarring thoughts of Nutte, and recognition that a skirt made the noise, but to his astonishment he saw Lissy's smiling face, glowing above a conjured light in her outstretched hand.

"Hello!"

"Lissy!" he cried before he could stop the slip. He could already feel his face heating from the surprise and struggled to recover himself. "Why-why are you here?"

"Should I not be?" she asked, and stretched to kiss him on the cheek.

"No! I mean, I don't see why not," he replied. "Shall I show you around?"

"If you can be spared for a while? I just wanted to see where you worked." He offered her his arm and explained the layout to her as they walked.

"Most of the basic theory is kept closer to the front so anyone who actually visits doesn't have to go too far," he explained. She snickered at that. "It's true: apparently most sorcerers hate this place."

"There must be all sorts hidden in these books," she said in wonder. Together they ambled between the shelves.

There was a book he particularly wanted to show her containing pages of complaints about the writer's father-in-law, complete with entertaining diagrams suggesting what the writer might do to their source of irritation. They were busy giggling over some of the more lurid passages together when Nutte discovered them.

"LAMPS ONLY!" he bellowed, making them both start violently.

"Ah!"

"It's a cold light," Lissy told him in a reasoning voice while Leander apologised.

"Rules are rules! This is the only library we have left!"

"And the whole place is packed with fire prevention cants," she said, running a finger down a bookcase.

"Really?" said Leander, discretely touching the bookcase and unsurprisingly feeling nothing.

Gilla, who had come to the doorway behind Nutte to see what the fuss was about, was serving them both with the same look of disgusted curiosity Leander had once seen in use at the garden party of a senior civil servant, when an escaped lunatic had wandered in and begun smearing himself in jam roly poly. It took on a slightly smug quality when Lissy extinguished her light as Nutte stalked closer.

"No harm done," she said cheerfully.

"Who are you?"

"Er, this-this is my wife, Alys. Alys, this is Edgar Nutte—"

"So pleased to meet you!" she said with convincing enthusiasm, thrusting her hand towards him.

"Wife?"

"Yes, she just dropped by—"

"She'll have to register," Nutte barked, turning abruptly away from her outstretched hand and striding away towards the desk, taking his pool of lamp light with him. As they followed him Gilla continued to openly stare, and Leander was completely wrong-footed for the first time since he had started work at the library.

"I don't think he likes me," Lissy whispered, making Leander laugh despite feeling like he had erred momentously.