Terror Forty-Six - Face

“That’s the building,” Esme says. She’s pointing to a big building across the last stretch of the courtyard. It reminds me of one of those judicial buildings for some reason, all tall and stately at the front, but plain and boring on the sides. “There should be some way to get in from the sides.”

“Let’s try not to run into any more templars,” I say as I walk over.

I explained to my friends already how walking as if we’re supposed to be here is less suspicious than being sneaky, but it’s hard to resist crouching down and slinking everywhere.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Esme says. “There aren’t that many templars, and I don’t think they come here all that often.”

“Why not? This entire place is dedicated to their god, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but it’s not the only place in Montele that is. Héroe is a popular god, you know.” Esme grins, then her grin turns into a pout. “You should know. He’s one of the gods that hates monsters the most.”

“Mom says that he’s a pompous butt,” I say. I’m paraphrasing a little there.

Felix giggles, but it makes Esme’s pout turn into a glare. “You shouldn’t mock a god, especially not one of the good ones.”

“I don’t know if there really are any good gods,” I say. “I think they’re mostly people, but... you know, more. With lots of power, and they’re usually really old. Like, not in-their-thirties old, but old-old.”

“Fifty?” Felix asks.

That is pretty ancient. “Nah, way older. Mom won’t tell me how old she is, but I’ve read a lot of history books that mention her, and some of those go way, way back. Like, you can see when a few of the other gods were just normal people, before they became gods. But there’s no record that goes far enough back to see some of the gods, Mom included.”

“She can’t be that old,” Esme says.

“Mom said that she was very excited when people invented writing,” I say. “She used to have to kidnap bards. Then they’d spread mean stories about things she did to them that weren’t true, so she’d send monsters after them.”

“Your mom sounds, uh, weird,” Felix says.

I laugh. “She’s a bit weird, but I love her lots, and she’s really nice once you get past her not-nice exterior. She’s like... Mom is like a pineapple.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read anyone calling the Goddess of Darkness and Death a pineapple,” Esme says.

“She’s not actually a goddess of death. Her domains are darkness, the void, disgust, loathing, and stuff like monsters and rebirth, but not actually death. I don’t think there is a god of death. Mom wouldn’t like them if there was one.”

“What? Why not?”

“Obviously because we need people to die to make more monsters and a god of death might meddle with that.”

Esme pouts really hard at me.

Frankly, that’s too bad. I don’t mind putting a good spin on things, but we’re not going to be good friends if she can’t accept me and Mom the way we are. I do want to be her friend, I really-really do, but I can’t pretend to be something I’m not all the time. That’ll be tiring and unfun, and I know I’ll stumble and mess up eventually.

I probably shouldn’t have hidden I was me for so long anyways. I know it wasn’t nice. Can’t do anything about that now, though.

We arrive next to the building and Esme points to a door. “That leads to the first floor, near the back where all the washrooms are. There’s a staircase going up there too. They have a space at the back that’s like a warehouse.”

“Is that where the books are stored?” I ask.

“I have no idea,” Esme says.

Well, only one way to find out, then. I walk over to the door and push it open. The corridor on the other side looks about as plain as a corridor can be, and there isn’t a team of templars waiting to ambush us. “It’s clear,” I whisper.

Once we’re all in, Esme points to a staircase. “That way.”

“Why did you think the books would be here?” I ask.

“Because this is the only place where they can manage a lot of stuff like books. There are offices and some rooms for storage, but it’s mostly all the space they have. I did some math... well, really it was more a lot of educated guesswork.”

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“Alright.”

“So, there are a lot of books in the city, but so far they’ve mostly been focusing on books being sold. Which means that the entire stock of any bookstore in the city is at risk. But they only need one copy of each book. Assuming they’re not just confiscating everything, which I don’t think they are.”

“Why not?”

“Because Montele has six big bookstores and nine smaller ones,” Esme says with the confidence of someone who’s visited all of them. “The bigger ones especially have enough books in them that they’d have to stack the books outside, or they wouldn’t be able to use any of the buildings here. Also, I stopped by the store nearest to the library, and they were selling a small stock of books while the rest were cordoned off.”

“Right, okay,” I say. “So instead they mostly have a copy of every book, right?”

“Just one, if they’re well-organized and aren’t taking in doubles. Plus all the copies of the books that get outright banned.”

I nod. “And this is the only place with enough storage for all of that.”

“I think it’s meant to be a school building. The top floor has classes, and there’s room for teachers and stuff below. But the two bottommost floors are all storage and offices.”

“There’s so much paperwork to run a place like this. It’s nuts,” I say.

“The academy trains a lot of people who will become great warriors. Or just military people, I guess. It’s mostly nobles who are sent here to get a strong second class that will help them fight monsters. And they have a big curriculum about Earth magics here.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” I say.

We get to the top of the stairs and the three of us tense up as we cross a man moving by, a large stack of books in his arms. “Oh, hello,” he says.

“Hi,” I say while trying to make my voice manly.

The man tilts his head to see past his books. He has glasses perched on the end of his nose, and his robes are a bit nicer than ours. Not as nice as the templar’s. “Isn’t it lunch time? Most of us have moved out already.”

“R-really? We’re just, ah, here to, uh...” I glance past him and notice a mop and bucket waiting at the far end of the corridor. “Mop the place up, clean things,” I say.

“Oh, you got up to some trouble and Henry handed out creative punishments again? Just make sure not to spill any water on the books,” he says before trudging past us and down the stairs.

We stand there until he reaches the bottom and moves out of sight, then we all sigh as one.

“Close one,” I say.

“The disguises worked this time,” Esme says. “And he mentioned books!”

“He did!” I say. We’re on the right track!

We rush through the corridor and past rooms that all have desks with books on them and some sheets of paper nearby. At a guess, I assume the people who decide whether a book is bannable or not read them here, and it looks like they’re all gone for lunch.

I wish that was part of my plan.

“Here,” Esme says. “This leads into the big room below.” She opens a door.

It’s our goal.

A wide and tall room, with a bay below for carts to be unloaded. Books are stacked all over the place on wooden boxes that keep them off the floor—if barely. There are pillars of manuscripts and piles of tomes and stacks of scrolls, enough to fill a whole corner of the library back home.

We move into the room, and I can’t help but grin. “We need to start picking, and fast,” I say. “Lunchtime won’t last forever.”

The door shuts.

I turn, expecting to see Felix, but she’s right next to me.

It’s the girl, the one we crossed earlier. She’s standing there with one hand on the door. “Huh?”

Her hand moves out and I gasp as a gust of wind tears my hood off.

She stares, confusion, then empty anger taking over her features. “Who are you, and why do you have Luna’s face?!”

***