The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (42 page)

Imago Bone lifted the book. It did not bite. He blew dust from its uninscribed cover.

Then he was off, vaulting up the stairs, as energetic as the day he turned sixty.

The topmost landing was empty of books. Overhead loomed a dark opening fragrant with guano, beyond which bookbats chittered of titles and covers. Bone hurried across the landing and opened a palmwood door.

Outsiders imagined the kleptomancers lived among silk and jewels, for the sorcerers wore such things outside. But among themselves they dropped pretensions. The high chambers had all the elegance of a well-ventilated dungeon.

The only decorations were baubles glinting under glass covers in the torchlit stairway Bone ascended: here a wooden pony missing one leg; there a stone block with a half-sculpted face; and now a circle of human skin, caressed by the tattoo of a woman’s name. He saw nothing he would steal, and arrived at the uppermost chamber.

“Imago Bone,” said a woman who seemed fifty, standing upon a carpet of drab, woven rope. “It has been so long.”

“So long,” echoed a man of perhaps sixty, perched upon a wooden stool behind a vast granite desk, “to find the nerve to return?”

Vine and Remora had aged at a crawl, but aged nonetheless. And they had not aged well: she seemed a skin garment cinched across sharp bones, while sagging, glistening flesh embellished his frown.

“Nerve?” Holding the tome behind him, Bone edged nearer the desk and its one feature, a battered manuscript below a glass cover. “Nerve is for youth. I should never have survived Hangnail Tower. Yet your two deaths—” he raised his face and the burn and scar framing it “—showed me I had years to hone my skills. At thirty I contemplated return. At forty I itched to try. But to what end? Your own lives are a better revenge than any I could devise.”

“You deny your weakness,” said Vine. “Weak in magic, weak in courage. How you disappointed me.” She adjusted herself as if he must still find her attractive.

“You have aged,” chuckled Remora, “but learned nothing. Do you even know what you want? We cannot lift your curse.”

“No, but you can lift that glass.”

They blinked in confusion. “This?” Remora raised the glass, fingered the stack of pages. “A minor poet’s spew? I just acquired this trifle and meant to mock its innocent evocations of despair. It is nothing.”

“It is everything, to the one who lost it.”

Remora smiled. “You
have
learned something. Yes, the passion of the former owner, that does matter, if you’ve learned to taste it, devour it. But you are deficient in magic, and cannot join us. Even if you could, this book is but a token.”

“Nothing like stealing a dozen hearts.”

Vine smirked. “Nothing at all.”

Bone said, “Nevertheless. It is Persimmon Gaunt’s sweat and toil. I would have it back.”

Vine smiled. “You love her.”

Bone shrugged.

“Come,” chuckled Remora, “we are both old men. We know what young smiles conjure.”

“I still have my lechery, kleptomancer, thank the gods. But I am not here for that. I like Gaunt. She reminds me what I’ve lost.”

“You are in love,” Vine said, “vulnerable to my curse.”

“No, Vine,” said her companion. “Mine awaits. Abnegation. Despair. Why should we give you this book?”

“Why not?” Bone said.

“Because it would please you. Even now we steal that thwarted pleasure.”

Bone sighed. “Very well. I did come prepared to bargain. I carry a rare tome.”

Vine’s eyes narrowed. “Let us see.”

Bone slid the volume across the table. Vine gingerly opened it.

“‘I tell you truly,’” she read, “‘death is neither romantic nor grim. It merely is, and what it is most, is humiliating. My own last words were, ‘Fools! The longbow is a child’s weapon . . .’”

Vine frowned, passed the book to Remora, who flipped to the middle.

Vine said, “What in the five corners is this, Bone?”

“The testimony of one thousand ghosts, one per page, all of whom died in foolish or freakish ways.”

“‘So I told my brothers,’” read Remora, “‘see, candleflames don’t hurt. But as I waved my finger I knocked the whole candle over, whence it spun into the face of Father’s mastiff, who promptly mauled my groin . . .’” Remora looked up in disgust. “This is a significant tome? Even Gaunt’s poetry has more merit.”

“Its merit is not literary.”

“Certainly not,” Remora said. “Such anecdotes should be forgotten; they steal all meaning from life.”

He slammed the cover so fiercely that an old flaw in a stool-leg fractured, pitching him forward into a crunching impact with the corner of the stone desk. He slumped dead to the floor.

“Eh? Remora?” Vine appeared more irritated at Remora’s stupidity than concerned for his safety. As she imperiously approached, she tripped over a loose rope of the carpet. Her head shattered the glass dome upon the table, and by freak happenstance, several large glass wedges impaled her face and throat. She gurgled and expired.

“It is neither romantic nor tragic,” Bone said, nipping both books from the table. “But it will do.”

The Reading Room was empty of speaking things. The deaths had vanished and the goblins still hid in the twistings of the library. So Bone had a clear path to the door of the bookbats.

He fell seven stories. But he’d read no story in
Mashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow
, so he had a chance.

And Persimmon Gaunt waited below, with a horsecart full of hay.

As he groaned, she drove them back to the alley, calling repeatedly, “You have it? You have it, Bone? Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, quieter please.”

When they were quite alone she leapt into the hay and kissed him. “I will copy my
Alley Flowers
now, I think. Thank you, Imago Bone. You’ve returned my life to me.”

“You had more poems in you. Better poems.”

“But not these poems. You risked all for my children, here. Yet I would not have asked this of you, had I known what I know now. At least, that is what I wish to believe.”

“Eh? Know what?”

Ruddy light flared above them, as Joyblood cried, “I have succeeded! This woman loves you, Bone, just enough.”

“Just enough,” Gaunt whispered.

“And yet I must ask a question before I whip her into murderous, jealous rage.”

“A question I share,” whispered a cold voice from the flickering shadows. “How is it,” Severstrand asked, “that two such as Remora and Vine could perish so suddenly, without even a night angel to claim them?”

“Behold, gentledeaths,” said Bone, rising and lifting the answer. “The accursed tome that slew them.”

“I am versed in accursed tomes,” hissed Severstrand. “I recognize it not.”

“You mock us,” wailed Joyblood.

“Not at all. This tome distills the essence of perverse and pointless deaths. It pronounces existence meaningless and absurd.”

Joyblood said, “Foolishness! Life screams with meaning!”

Severstrand said, “Joyblood may fear such a work. But it would suit me well.”

The shadowy death approached, as the crimson death hesitated.

Imago Bone raised the tome higher, and Severstrand grew hazy, like half-glimpsed midnight smoke. Hissing thinly, he backed away and grew more substantial, gasping as if for breath.

“Old companion,” said Bone sadly, “you represent despair. But despair, like passion, is a meaning. This book embodies meaninglessness. Not a cosmos cold and cruel, but one like a blank page, adorned in one corner by a smeared insect. No poetry, not even graveyard verse. And without poetry, even you cannot endure.”

“Joyblood,” Severstrand wheezed. “You allowed this.”

“I? You interfered at every step. Persimmon Gaunt is but my latest success. Had you stepped aside . . .”

“I could not! I was his death!”

“Bah. I shall be yours.”

Scythe met fire. Stray sparks lit the hay.

The inhabitants of Index Road would have nightmares for days, but only Bone and Gaunt would understand the cause, and they but dimly.

Joyblood’s fire-whips blazed the light of love denied, and bits of burning cobweb rose on the wind. But Severstrand’s scythe-hand hissed the promise of final darkness, and the wave of pure morbidity parted the primal fires: and Joyblood screamed. But the fires rejoined, and the scream became a crackling, a cackling.

All along Index Road people shuddered as the fires of obsession cast the shadows of despair, and they fled, or fell to their knees and awaited world’s end. Imago Bone and Persimmon Gaunt felt their souls tremble in their bodies, buffeted by hot and cold winds they felt beneath the skin.

Had the deaths been equal, they might have struggled until the city dissolved, its reality torn by opposite dooms. But Severstrand had been damaged by the accursed book, and at last his substance smoldered from Joyblood’s fire, and he collapsed against a refuse heap, harried by gnats. His scythe and snippers twitched, but could not ward Joyblood. The other death, shrunken but burning bright, laughed in triumph and raised the arm of fiery whips.

“Stop!”

The two deaths stared. So did Imago Bone.

Persimmon Gaunt stood before the two deaths, palms raised. “No,” shouted Bone, rushing to her side.

She pushed him away. “How can you allow this?” she asked him.

“Allow? They are deaths!”

“They are
your
deaths. How can you let them perish?”

Bone stared in bewilderment; and the deaths were too startled to move.

Gaunt said, “The night angels embody poetic endings, yes? Well, I am a poet, you fools. I wrote my
Alley Flowers
in a place such as this. I cannot stand here and watch one poem slay another.”

She walked between the deaths.

“Leave us,” Severstrand whispered.

“Go!” Joyblood raged.

Bone watched for a heartbeat that seemed eight decades long. Then he raised
Mashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow.

“Joyblood. Hold your anger. Or I will read from the book.”

Joyblood said, “I would regret your death, Bone, but it is no longer my obsession.”

Desperate, Bone said, “But consider! If I, the Thief With Two Deaths, die of freak happenstance in an alley, what would the tales say about the angels of the night?”

“They would say you are irrelevant,” Gaunt declared. “There would be no fear, no awe.”

Joyblood hesitated.

Bone jumped to the cobblestones. “But if not that, consider this. For eighty years, who have been my companions? Not my dalliances, not my clients or rivals or marks. You. We have not been friends. But who has bandied philosophy beneath eclipses and beside battlefields? Who has championed maximum-casualty chess? Who has lit scores of birthday candles, and who has snuffed them?

“We have walked together O deaths, and your shadows have comforted me.” Bone regarded his tome. “I fear my ending, but even more I fear the world as revealed in this book. Should one of you vanish, we come closer to that reality.”

Silently, the deaths regarded him.

At last Joyblood said, “We are not friends, we three.”

Severstrand said, “Do not mock us, Bone, at the end.”

“I do not mock, and we are not friends. Do as you will.”

He flung the book into the burning hay. It would not be damaged, but for now it would be difficult to touch.

Joyblood lowered his blazing head and edged backward. With his shears Severstrand scratched his cobwebbed chin. They regarded one another.

Then moldy death and blazing death each gave a nod as fleeting as rose petals upon a grave.

They walked toward opposite ends of the alley, but never reached the streets. They dwindled as they went, like birds, then bees, then fireflies, then like the memory of fireflies. And Bone and Gaunt were alone.

She took his hand. “I’ve spent lifetimes stealing,” he said, watching the fire, “but today you have given me something new.”

“What will you do now, Thief With One Life?”

He smirked. “To begin, I have an accursed book on my conscience, and no place to hide it. I must find one. It may be a long journey. And, Gaunt, I’ve forgotten how to live, without the company of deaths.”

“There are ways,” she said, drawing him closer. “I do not know if Joyblood was correct about me, Bone, but if I swear not to slay you in a fit of passion, perhaps we can learn. For they say the nearness of death awakens certain appetites, and I would like to see for myself.”