The Faintest Ink (Watty Winner 2015)

Chapter Forty-Two

Hawth had been disappointed when she saw the royal library for the first time. After witnessing the glory of the one built for the masters, she had assumed at least a basic level of care and attention bestowed on the King's own books. But it seemed the monarchs of Serrador were not raised to be great readers and their library was a fairly small affair, tucked away down a dark corridor, and squashed between the chamber of the fifth lady of the wardrobe, and an equally uninspired music room.

The books, once Hawth had brushed away the thick layers of dust, were varied in quality. Most of them gifts and inscribed by various foreign officials and ambassadors on behalf of their rulers.The subjects varied from local legends and religious texts from around the Western Isles, to animal husbandry and crop rotation presented by the small nation of Braken Dray.

There was even a copy of the Canta of the Immortal Rose. Slightly different from the one her father printed and sold. It was a much older version, based on a series of mistranslations from the old Serradorian. The illustrations however were very fine, hand picked out with costly blues and gold, while so many cabochon-cut jewels had been set into the cover that it weighed heavy in her hands.

She'd been careful not to show Straw that one. He'd of plucked out the jewels and sold them down on the market before the day was out if he'd even guessed its half its value. As for the hand-scribed pages nestled within, there wouldn't have been a moment's hesitation in his mind before he used them to fuel the kitchen fire before starting to cook his tea over it.

As she stepped inside, she had to hold herself tight to stop herself from shuddering. There was a time when the sight of a room full of books would have been a source of comfort, but now all she could sense was the feeling of dread, like the clanking of chains or the cracking of a whip.

Even the thirty-four volume set of the collected histories of Falmagne, something she would have run to only a week before, appeared to sit squat on the shelf like a poisonous toad.

Such riches however were not what attracted Larst to this room. He'd eschewed the tomes found on the shelves and had dedicated all his energies to the papers left spread out and stacked up on the tables in the centre of the room. Maps. Hundreds of them. Detailing every inch of their country, from the villages scattered over the north, all across the barren moors, and then over the riches of the south, right down to the streets of the capital.

"Absolutely not," he said as she approached, not even bothering to raise his head.

"Not what?"

"We've already established that there is no danger to the people if we burn the books, and this may well be the best chance we have of stopping the masters."

"But what if we-" she started.

"Absolutely not."

"You could at least pretend to you want to listen to what I'm trying to say."

Larst leant back in his seat and sighed. "But I can already guess what it is. And we just can't. There are hundreds of masters. Thousands even. And that's the problem. We just don't know what's going on there. And we can't convince the people out there on the streets to commit to us because they're all too damn scared. While the books are left untouched, no one with a name is ever going to risk helping. And we can't hardly sit here waiting for a couple of hundred unnameds to randomly walk through the gates and offer us assistance. We must strike now while we have the chance. While the Chancellor thinks we are too..."

"Ineffectual?" Hawth suggested, her heart sinking as she realised she had already lost.

"Sure."

Hawth pulled out a chair and sat opposite him, leaning her elbows on the table.

"What's this then?" she said, waving a hand at the maps.