The Lost Books Page 8

  “I just wondered,” he heard her murmur, “why someone like you would choose to be a librarian.”

  Alex’s head whipped up, and he stared at her. She had said I. Not the royal we. “I’m just like you,” he said, on impulse.

  “We rather think that you are nothing like us,” she said, all frosty distance again.

  “Yes, I am,” he said, growing more certain. “I didn’t choose to be a librarian. My father hates it. He wants me to . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind. A librarian is what I am. It’s the same for you.” He pointed at her. “You didn’t choose to be queen. It’s not easy, and I think there are people who want you to fail at it.” Her uncle, he guessed. “But a queen is what you are.”

  She stared at him for a long, silent moment. A flush crept up her face, and her mouth trembled. Then she took a steadying breath and lifted her chin. “It does sound as if you have a lot of work to do before the end of the month, Librarian Farnsworth.” She must have made some kind of gesture, because the guards were coming toward them, weaving between the vegetable beds and statuary. “And there’s one more thing,” she added, before he could leave.

  “Yes?” he asked. “Your Majesty?”

  “You said before that our steward does not like you.”

  “That’s right,” Alex confirmed.

  Completely in control of herself again, she gave him an edged smile. “Well, we do not like you either.”

  Alex shrugged and then—he couldn’t help it—he grinned at her, not librarian to queen, but boy to girl not much older than he was. “That’s all right,” he said, and felt a flash of triumph when he saw her blink in surprise. “As far as I know, nobody likes me.”

  And before she could say anything else, he whirled and hurried out of the garden and up the stairs. The very second the palace door had closed behind him, he summoned two of his pages.

  Librarian, they wrote as they hovered before him only barely visible, as if they didn’t like being seen outside the library. What do you command?

  The pages, he figured, had stolen the coat he was wearing from somewhere. The queen had clearly recognized it. So they were thieves. That was not an entirely bad thing.

  “Pages,” he ordered, “find me light-wells. Take them from anywhere in the palace. Steal them if you have to, and bring them to the library.”

  12

  I am a queen, Kenneret told herself. She stood before the tall mirror in the royal attiring room and inspected herself from the top of her head to the tips of the embroidered shoes that peeked from under her wide skirts. Her ladies-in-waiting had dressed her in pink satin today, a dress covered with flounces and frills. She looked, she thought, like a cupcake. With lace frosting.

  We are the queen.

  She was the queen, and yet her uncle had scolded her after she’d left him in the garden to talk to the librarian.

  Well, not scolded, exactly. Uncle Patch would never mar his face with a frown. But he’d reminded her in his most reasonable voice how important it was to cultivate relationships with the nobles and courtiers who flocked to the Winter Palace when the harvest was in. You have to make yourself popular, he advised. You have to make them like you. And then he’d looked grave. I am very much afraid, my dear, that you have not yet shown them your likable side.

  She gave a little snort. The librarian clearly never worried about showing his likable side.

  While she had to keep proving herself, over and over, every day. And it was only getting worse. There were snide comments that seemed to mean one thing on the surface, and meant something completely different once she’d thought about it. People wanted things from her, constantly. Her orders were somehow misinterpreted, almost as if somebody was secretly, insidiously sabotaging her, trying to make her look bad. She worked hard, late into the night, and there was always, always something she’d neglected to do.

  She did not have time to deal with the royal library.

  Or the royal librarian.

  He was a very strange boy.

  All the courtiers and nobles—they saw her as somebody who could get them what they wanted, which was power. But they never came right out and asked for anything. It was all subtle, suggested, implied. Whisperings. Secrets and intrigue. The librarian was different. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him. He knew what he wanted and he came right out and asked for it. And if he wasn’t given what he needed—what the library needed—he went out and got it.

  Two days ago, the steward had come to her with complaints that the librarian had somehow stolen every unsecured light-well in the palace.

  She needed to be that kind of queen.

  Carefully she unpinned the lace fichu around her neck and stripped the jeweled rings from her fingers. The rings had hidden the calluses on her hands, but she couldn’t worry about that now.

  “Your Majesty!” protested one of her ladies-in-waiting, Lady Arriss. When she had picked out the pink dress, she had held it out to Kenneret with a sly smile. Tall, graceful Arriss, of course, would look stunningly beautiful in such a dress, and the lady-in-waiting clearly knew that the same dress would make Kenneret look ridiculous.

  Ignoring her, Kenneret kicked off the embroidered slippers and stepped into her closet, where she found the dresses she’d worn before she’d been crowned queen. With quick fingers, she unlaced the stiff bodice of the pink cupcake dress and slipped it off, leaving it in a pink heap on the floor.

  The three ladies-in-waiting clustered at the door of the closet, protesting as Kenneret put on a simple sky-blue gown made of the softest lambswool, with a plain collar secured by a flat, gold pin that her mother had worn when she had been queen. A carefully chosen detail. This gown had pearly buttons up the front, ones she could do up herself. She put on fleece-lined boots with just a bit of heel, to give herself some more height. Ready, she went to the mirror, where she straightened and took a deep breath. There. Much better. She looked plain and tidy, and she felt like herself.

  It was stupid to think that simply changing her clothes would change . . . oh, how people like Lady Arriss spoke to her, or treated her, but the fashions of the Winter Palace made her look like a ridiculous mushroom, she knew it, and wearing what she actually wanted to was a start. She would not listen to whispers and lace and jewels and flounces and lies. Like the librarian, she would ask for what she wanted, and she would get it, too.

  Carefully she set the gold circlet on her head, stuck in a few pins to hold it there, and pushed past her ladies. She was sure she heard a snigger as she went out of the attiring room.

  Her steward was waiting for her in the anteroom.

  “Your Majesty,” Dorriss said with a smooth bow. “Your brother has arrived. He awaits you in the blue salon.”

  Kenneret felt her heart leap. Charlie had been scheduled to arrive four days ago. Who knew what he’d been up to, to make him so late. “Have tea and toast sent up,” she ordered. “We will meet him there.” She stepped toward the door, then stopped. “And inform Lady Arriss that we no longer require her service.” She heard a gasp from the ladies behind her.

  Her uncle would have something to say about it, but she would hold firm. The librarian was right. These people were awful. And she was queen. She didn’t have to put up with them if she didn’t want to. She didn’t have to be likable or nice. She had to be good at trade negotiations and setting tax rates and dealing with the farmers’ guild.

  Feeling lighter of heart than she had in a long time, she strode through the hallways, past bowing and curtseying servants and nobles, and the diplomatic delegation from the north, where a conflict with their warlike Greyling neighbors was brewing again.

  She went straight to the blue salon, where she found her brother, Charlie, sprawled on a silk sofa with his boots propped on a priceless table. “Hullo, Kennie,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “Charlie,” she said as they gave each other the traditional greeting, a kiss on each cheek. Then she held him at arm’s length, inspecting him.

>   He was her younger brother, but he was taller than she was by five inches. No, six—he’d grown since the summer. Like her, he had a snub nose and skin that tanned easily in the summer and paled to a sort of sallow olive in the winter, and dark brown hair, but his had a bit of curl in it that made him look dashing, even though he was only fourteen. He was big—he had big hands and big feet, and one day, when he grew into them, he would be a very large, intimidating man.

  But for now he was just awkward, and quite astonishingly clumsy, as if furniture and sharp corners leaped out to make him trip or bump his shins, or drop whatever he was carrying. His booted feet, she noticed, had left scratches on the surface of the table he’d propped them on.

  “Here,” he said, holding out a grubby letter and then flopping down on the sofa again.

  She sat primly on a chair.

  The letter was from the headmaster at his school, Starkcliffe. “Oh, Charlie,” she murmured as she read. “Oh, Charlie.” She looked up at him. “Have you read this?”

  “No,” he said sullenly, staring at the toes of his boots.

  “Disruptive in class,” she read aloud. “Failure in every subject. Fights. No friends. Bullying! Charlie, you’re a prince! You can’t be a bully!”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “I know. I’m supposed to be like you. Always setting a good example.”

  She sighed. “Have you talked to Uncle Patch yet?”

  He swallowed and shook his head. “No.” He shot her a nervous glance. “D’you think he’ll be angry, Kennie?”

  “I think it’s very likely,” she answered, folding the headmaster’s letter. Not that Uncle Patch would show it. He never did. But both she and her brother knew very well that their uncle felt much more than he showed.

  Charlie was a prince, but unless something dire happened to her, he would never be king. He hated school, and always had. His life had no purpose. He tried to hide it, but with her keen eye for details, she could see signs that he wasn’t just a troublemaker, he was deeply unhappy. What was she going to do with him?

  And then she had a quite brilliant idea.

  13

  Alex woke up on the ratty velvet couch in his office. His nose was cold. The rest of him was warm. During the night, his pages had put an extra blanket over him, and then they’d added more layers—another blanket, a pile of cleaning rags, a towel that smelled like it had been used to rub down a horse, and a beautifully embroidered curtain. He didn’t want to crawl out from under it all. His office was freezing. So was the library. A few days ago he’d sent a note to the steward about getting heat to this part of the palace, but she’d written back that the queen had ordered that the heat should be cut off.

  He’d have to ask Her Royal Majesty about it.

  Not that it mattered that much. He’d been working hard, long hours, but he didn’t have many days left to figure out why the books were waking up, and why some of them were being marked by that symbol and turned into dangerous traps. He only had until the end of the month.

  And then, disaster.

  Carefully he snaked an arm out from under his pile of blankets and things, grabbed his coat, pulled it into his warm nest, and wrestled himself into it. As soon as he did, a page drifted in and set a steaming cup on his desk.

  Flinging back the blankets and covers, Alex shivered into his scuffed shoes, pulled on his woolly hat, and then went to sit at his desk, where he cradled his hands around the teacup, breathing in the steam.

  His pa liked a hot cup of tea in the morning, too.

  And followed it with a brisk set of sword drills and, if the weather was less abysmally foul than usual, a ten-mile run, along with a troop of men-at-arms, some of whom were women-at-arms. As a refresher, they’d all strip down and race into the lake, which was freezing even during the summer, swim for a bit, and then have breakfast.

  Alex shivered just thinking about it.

  Just as he was looking about for a book to read as he drank his tea, a page drifted past his left shoulder and brushed his cheek, a comforting touch. A moment later, a letter dropped onto the desk in front of him.

  With chilled fingers, Alex turned it over and read the envelope.

  It was addressed to the former royal librarian, Maeviss Clark—the one who had died here.

  He shook his head, trying to ignore the foreboding thought that if he wasn’t careful, he could die here, too.

  Opening the letter, Alex saw that it was from the librarian—ancient, of course—at a library in Far Wrothing.

  My dearest Maeviss,

  I write to you, my dear friend, with a professional concern, which is that the library here has been behaving most peculiarly. As you know, I have looked after the books here with utmost care and concern for many years. But then I found a book with a certain symbol on its cover that I will not reproduce here.

  Suspecting what it might be, I have not opened this book, but have instead sequestered it in a locked room. Despite my precautions, I fear it is affecting the other books. They are restless and—I think quite possibly they are frightened. There have been some rather strange occurrences.

  My friend, I rather fear that the presence of this marked book means that one of the L.B.s is hidden here in my library, though I have not yet been able to find it. I have always assumed that we dealt with the L.B.s long ago—sixty years, by my count. It terrifies me to think that, after all this time, we may have failed, after all.

  Please advise me soonest as to what I should do.

  Your colleague,

  Jackys Hockett

  “Pen,” Alex muttered, opening a desk drawer and searching through it. He set out paper, took up the pen that one of his pages brought him, and found that the ink was almost frozen in its bottle. After stirring it up, he began writing a letter to Librarian Hockett, asking her what she meant by L.B.s, and why it or they or whatever it was had been hidden in her library. There were other secrets in this letter, too. What, exactly, had happened sixty years ago? He needed answers! He was just about to sign his letter Merwyn Farnsworth when a thought hit him like a brick falling on his head.

  He sat up straight. A bead of ink gathered at the tip of his pen and fell, splat, in the middle of the letter.

  The Far Wrothing librarian. She could be the target of this marked book—she might be killed by it, just as his master had been, and just like the royal librarian. She was in danger, terrible danger.

  Quickly Alex crumpled up the letter he’d been writing, tossed it aside, and pulled out a clean piece of paper.

  Librarian Hockett,

  he wrote.

  You must immediately lock the marked book in a box and send it to me, and absolutely do not open it.

  After thinking for a moment, he added:

  I regret to tell you that your friend Maeviss Clark, the former royal librarian, has died. I think it very likely that one of the marked books killed her. Do not underestimate your own danger.

  Then he signed it:

  Merwyn Farnsworth

  And then he added a postscript.

  P.S. Write out whatever you know about the L.B.s and what happened sixty years ago and send it to me at once.

  Hockett had written that the books are frightened. The books here were frightened, too—it explained their behavior, all the flying around, the barricading, the flinging from shelves, the rattling of chains. The fact that the same sort of thing was happening in other libraries meant the problem was bigger than he thought, something to do with these L.B.s, whatever they were, and with librarian secrets. He needed to figure it out as soon as he possibly could.

  And he had no time. Only a few days, that was it.

  Alex folded his letter, stuffed it into an envelope, and jumped to his feet. He’d take it to the steward himself. After carefully locking the library door behind him, he made his way through the dusty hallways of the palace to the steward’s office.

  She was there, behind her desk, working. As he entered, she looked up and gave him one of her disapprovi
ng looks.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “You don’t like me. The feeling is mutual, all right?”

  “It does not matter whether I like you or not, Librarian,” she said, putting down her pen. “I do not trust you—that is what counts.”

  “You can trust me to do what’s best for the library,” he said.

  She got to her feet. “And you can trust me to do what is right for the queen. Always.” The truth of that shone in her dark eyes.

  And Alex understood. They both served something bigger than they were. With a nod, he held out the letter. “This has to go today by the fastest means possible,” he ordered.

  Raising her eyebrows, the steward took the letter.

  “It’s a matter of life and death,” he added.

  “Very well,” she said. “It will go today.”

  “Good. Thank you.” And with that, he left. She was loyal, he had to admit, and she was good at her job. She’d see the letter got to the librarian at Far Wrothing. He headed back to the library.

  He was walking head down, thinking, and had just turned the corner and into the hallway that led to the library door, when he nearly ran into someone.

  It was the queen’s uncle, Lord Patchedren. “Ah, Librarian Farnsworth,” he said, with just a bit of an emphasis to show that he knew Alex wasn’t who he said he was. He smiled and slipped a book into the pocket of his laced silk coat. He’d been coming from the library, even though the door was locked. More of his sneaking around.

  “You’re searching for something,” Alex realized suddenly.

  “Am I?” Lord Patch asked.

  “In the library,” Alex went on.

  “Now what would I be looking for in a library?” Lord Patch said, and he smiled faintly, as if he and Alex were sharing a joke.

  One that wasn’t funny. “A book,” Alex said grimly. “You’re looking for a book.”