Read The Palace of Glass Online
Authors: Django Wexler
If I summoned Spike, right now, he could charge across the room and put a horn through that nasty old man's chest.
She pictured Geryon pinned to the wall, like a butterfly mounted in an insect collection.
It wouldn't work, of course. Geryon hadn't gotten to be as old as he was by being careless. He'd have defenses, and his own summoned creatures to back him. In a head-on fight, she was still no match for him.
Patience.
“You retrieved the century fruit?”
Alice held out one of the purple globes, and Geryon took it, his face betraying, for once, a hint of eagerness. He held it up to the lamp on his desk, admiring the smooth, unblemished skin.
“Ah, perfect. The very peak of ripeness. Exquisite.”
“What is it good for?”
Geryon was pleased enough that he didn't mind this impertinence. “Many things. Elixirs of longevity, or protections against certain poisons. Crushed into ink, it makes an excellent medium for some types of spells.”
He pressed his thumbnail against the skin of the fruit until it broke, then delicately peeled back a thin strip. Inside was a mass of little round seeds, translucent and faintly pink. Geryon worked one loose and held it between thumb and forefinger.
“But mostly,” he murmured, “it's the taste.”
He popped the seed into his mouth, and Alice heard it
crunch
between his teeth. For a moment, his face went slack, and he let out a long, satisfied breath.
“They ripen only once every hundred years, you know,” he went on, setting the fruit on his desk.
“Those wasp things certainly wanted them badly,” Alice said.
Geryon chuckled without humor. “I daresay. They've been feeding that flower for a hundred years. Without the fruit, their queen will starve, and the rest of the colony will die with her.”
Alice thought about the blind desperation with which the wasps had hurled themselves against her and Isaac. Her throat went thick.
Her master misinterpreted her expression. “Don't fret about it. Herd-wasps are useless creatures anyway. Not worth the trouble of binding. And there are plenty of other colonies out there.” He leaned forward. “Now. The rest of the fruit?”
She handed over the two remaining globes. Geryon frowned.
“I instructed you to bring four,” he said, voice taking on a hard edge.
“I'm sorry, sir,” Alice said. “There were only six there, so Isaac and I thoughtâ”
“You
thought
?” Geryon's lip twisted. “I
instructed
you to bring me four century fruit.”
“Anaxomander told Isaac the same thing,” Alice said. “There weren't enough.”
“Then you should have taken what you needed by force,” Geryon snapped.
“Isaac fought the wasps just as much as I did,” Alice said, a sick feeling growing in her stomach to go with the hot anger in her chest. “It wouldn't be fair.”
“
Fair
is not my concern.” Geryon's face had gone cold. “You are entirely too friendly with this Isaac. I believe I will tell his master that any further joint ventures will have to be suspended until the two of you can correct your attitude.” He put the two century fruits down and gave an irritated sigh. “I was going to let you taste this, as a reward for a job well done, but now I see I have been spoiling you. I will have to devise an appropriate punishment.”
“Yes, sir,” Alice grated. “I'm sorry, sir.”
“Go. Do not come back until I call for you.”
I could throw a swarmer at him, right in the eyeâ
“Yes, sir,” Alice said, slipping out of the study.
WRITING LESSONS
A
LIC
E SAT ON THE
dusty stone floor, eyes closed, cocooned in the warm, stale smell of Geryon's library. In her inner vision, swarming letters of liquid blue fire hovered tantalizingly on the edge of comprehensibility. There were hints and suggestions of meaning, brushing past her like moths in the dark. And if she could only line them up in the right order, if
this
piece would fit
here,
it would all suddenly become obvious . . .
“Don't push too hard.” Ending's voice was a thoughtful purr. “You cannot force clarity, or insight. If it will not link, find a way around.”
It's so close, though.
The last gap in the web she'd been constructing all afternoon obstinately remained
unfilled. Her fingers twitched against the leather cover of the book by her side, and in her mind she saw a well of twisting blue-and-green fragments, circling endlessly like water around a drain. She teased them out, delicately, feeling them squirm and wriggle against her mental grip as if they were alive. She saw one that might fit
there,
and the end of it would link the other piece, which fit
here
 . . .
Her father had once brought her a jigsaw puzzle with a picture of three kittens sleeping. Alice had put it together in one afternoon, but she kept it intact on her bedroom table for a week, unable to think of anything else to do with the thing. She'd decided it was a fairly pointless amusement, and had never asked for another. Now she wished she had, for the practice;
this
was like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box, with pieces that twisted and
fought
when you tried to put them down.
The last link snapped into place, and the whole structure shivered. Alice released her mental grasp, tentatively, and saw the lines of azure flame tremble like trees in a strong wind. After a moment, they settled down, and the structure held.
It held!
Alice opened her eyes. She was sitting in a dark corner of the library, in between two tall piles of books. A hurricane lamp burned by her left knee, throwing long
shadows. Across from her, Ending lay in the gloom, her cat-slitted yellow eyes glowing with interest.
Between them were three thick pieces of parchment. When Alice had started, they'd been blank. Now they were covered with words, the same almost-but-not-quite-comprehensible script she'd seen in her mind, printed neatly in ink instead of written in blue fire. She could feel the meaning inside them, not random and undirected like the scraps she'd found in the books but tuned, harnessed, humming with power. Just glancing at them almost brought the magic forth, and she hurriedly looked away and started folding the sheets over, hiding the words from view.
“I did it,” Alice said. The fatigue of a long day's work melted away in her excitement. “It held!”
“It certainly seems so,” Ending rumbled. She yawned, and lantern light gleamed on her ivory fangs. “We'll have to test it, of course.”
Excitement changed to frustration, all at once. The thing she'd constructed was a sort of trap for magical creatures, a set of wards that created a barrier that would contract until anything inside it was securely restrained. Ending had told her that creating this kind of magical trap was one of the simplest uses of
Writing.
Simple or not, it had taken her a long time to get this far. Ending could only advise, never help her directlyâthe labyrinthine was a creature of magic, not a Reader, so for all her vast knowledge she could not see the scraps of magic and lines of meaning in books as Alice did. She could only explain things in general terms, leaving Alice to puzzle out the exact methods by herself through laborious guess-and-check.
If Geryon would teach me, things would be so much easier.
Of course, if Geryon had been willing to teach her Writing, things might have been very different.
Ending said the creation of new books was one of the old Readers' most closely guarded secrets, the source of their power, and that learning it would help Alice undermine her master. But Alice's patience was fraying. The hot spark of anger in her chest wanted
action,
the sooner the better.
And now Ending wants to
test
the wards.
A long series of tests, no doubt, and revisions to the spell, and then more tests and more revision. It made her want to scream.
“You should be proud,” Ending said, as if sensing her mood. “You have come a long way in a very short time, without the instruction of a Reader to show you the path.”
“It still doesn't
help
.” Alice waved dismissively at the
wards. “Geryon's not going to fall for a trap like this, is he? How does this get us any closer to what we want?”
“One step at a time,” Ending said. “Geryon will not teach you Writing because he knows with that knowledge you might threaten him. By learning what he does not wish you to know, you will see the limits of his power. One dayâ”
“One day,” Alice said, and groaned. “You don't know what it's like. He calls me into his office, and I have to do what he says and act like I don't know
anything
. And all I can think about is what I'll do when I get my hands on him . . .”
“I understand,” Ending said, voice low and dangerous. “Believe me, Alice, I understand. But I am a great deal older than you, and I have learned the virtues of patience. We will have our opportunity, sooner or later.”
Alice had heard it all before. Privately, she thought that someone as paranoid as Geryon was not likely to grant them a perfect opportunity to take advantage of him. If they wanted a chance, they would have to
make
one.
No percentage in hanging about.
Her father's phrase made something in her chest twinge weakly, and she gritted her teeth.
“All right,” she said. “How do we test the wards?”
“Later, I'm afraid,” Ending said. “For now you had best return to your duties. I can sense that Mr. Wurms has begun to fret about your absence. We can experiment with your creation tomorrow.”
Alice got to her feet, her legs complaining of so long spent in a single position. With a brief mental gesture, second nature now, she pulled on a thread at the back of her mind and brought swarmers tumbling into the world with a chorus of tiny
pops
. The little creatures scurried around for a moment, then organized themselves at her mental command, picking the books off their piles and carrying them, three or four swarmers to each. From Alice's height, it looked like the books had sprouted tiny black legs, following behind her like a line of literary ducklings.
Ashes was waiting for her as she walked back through the narrow aisles, perched atop the shelves and looking down with haughty yellow eyes. He was a small gray catâa half-cat, he would insist, as a son of the labyrinthine Endingâwho had been Alice's guide when she'd first snuck into the library. He walked beside her atop the bookcases, padding from shelf to shelf, his swishing tail raising waves of dust in his wake.
“Any luck?” he said.
“I got the spell to work,” Alice said. “Ending says it needs testing.”
“Fantastic.” The cat stepped daintily across a narrow gap between shelves. “In another two hundred years, you might make something of yourself.”
Alice had learned to shrug off Ashes' needling, which meant little more than that he was in a good mood. “I suppose
you
trained long and hard to do . . . whatever it is you do around here.” She shot him a smirk.
“Training is for those not graced with natural talent, as all half-cats obviously are. And I'll have you know that my siblings and I are a vital part of the defenses of the library.”
“Defenses against rodents, you mean.”
“Can you see Master Geryon out here chasing the little terrors down himself?”
Alice chuckled, and Ashes hopped to the ground beside her, circling her ankles.
“Well?” the cat said. “Are we going to walk all the way there?”
“You're going to get fat if you keep being so lazy.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing. For cats, being fat just means that you're winning.”
Alice grinned and reached out for the strange, slippery
fabric of the labyrinth. Searching the library for scraps of magical power that had ripened in the vast collection since the last time she'd come through was still one of her primary duties, whenever Geryon didn't have a more important errand for her. It had grown much easier, however, since her return from Esau's fortress. Not only had her ability to sense the magic from a distance grown as her own power had expanded, but the Dragon's labyrinthine abilities also let her step across the library in moments. Ending's power over her own labyrinth was superior, obviously, but Alice could twist space as she liked as long as the labyrinthine didn't stop her. It was one way she managed to fit in her lessons in Writing while still finding enough magic to satisfy Mr. Wurms.
It was also a power Geryon knew nothing about. She'd kept it secret when she'd come back from Esau's, in spite of a few probing questions from her master about how, exactly, she'd defeated Torment. The more he didn't know, she reasoned, the easier he would be to fool.
She gripped the fabric in her mind, folding it over just around the next corner, so that
here
became
there
. Ashes stepped ahead of her through the gapâhe seemed to be able to sense the fabric as well, presumably as a result of his half-labyrinthine ancestry. Alice rounded the corner
and passed into familiar territory, an aisle between two tight-packed shelves that led to Mr. Wurms' table.
They found him sitting at his table, as always. He looked like an older man in a black suit, with a high, shiny forehead and thick spectacles, but Alice knew now that he wasn't really human. Like Mr. Black, the big, surly groundskeeper, he was a magical creature in Geryon's employânot something the Reader had pulled out of a prison-book, the way Alice could summon the Swarm or Spike, but an intelligent being who'd agreed to serve.
He looked up at her approach, a cloud of dust rising from his clothes at the slight motion. Mr. Wurms spent most of his time filling thick leather volumes with tiny, precise script, only his fingers moving. When he saw Alice, he made an effort to smile, showing a mouth full of rotting teeth.
The first time she'd come to the library, Alice had been afraid of Mr. Wurms. There was a
hunger
about him, and his eyes, huge and blurry behind his spectacles, bored into hers in a way that made her uncomfortable. Now, though, Alice realized he was deliberately avoiding her gaze and his long, thin fingers twitched nervously.
He's afraid,
she thought.
He's afraid of me.
“Ms. Creighton,” Mr. Wurms said in his rasping,
German-accented voice. “Have you had a good day's hunting?”
“Fair,” Alice said. The swarmers rushed past her, stacking the books beside the table. Controlling so many of the little creatures was always a challenge, especially on a complex task, and Alice felt a touch of pride when they finished the pile without a single book toppling.
“Good, good.” Mr. Wurms set his pen down and closed his ledger with a
thump
. Alice was taken aback. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen him stop writing. “Our presence has been requested at the house this afternoon. The master wishes to speak to everyone.” He looked up at where Ashes sat atop the bookcases. “Including you, rat-catcher.”
“I'd like to see
you
catch a rat, mister scribbler,” Ashes said. “Tell you what, we'll see how long your precious books last if my brothers and sisters quit keeping the vermin down.”
“Did he say what he wanted?” Alice said, ignoring the cat.
“No,” Mr. Wurms said. “Most unusual.”