“That was fear,” Eril-Fane said simply.
“But . . . fear of what?” Lazlo couldn’t comprehend it. “The citadel’s empty. What can there be to harm them?”
Eril-Fane let out a slow breath. “Were you afraid of the dark as a child?”
A chill snaked up Lazlo’s spine. He thought again of the crypt at the abbey, and the nights locked in with dead monks. “Yes,” he said simply.
“Even when you knew, rationally, that there was nothing in it that could harm you.”
“Yes.”
“Well. We are all children in the dark, here in Weep.”
34
Spirit of Librarian
Another day over, another day of work and wonder, and Lazlo was returning to Suheyla’s for the night. As he crossed the Avenue, that solitary stripe of sunlight, he saw the errand boy from the guildhall coming toward him with a tray. It held empty dishes, and he realized the boy must be coming back from the crematorium, which lay just ahead. He’d have brought Thyon’s dinner, and traded it for his empty lunch tray. Lazlo greeted him, and wondered in passing how Thyon was getting on. He hadn’t seen him in the couple of days since he’d hidden himself away, and hadn’t had an update to give Eril-Fane when asked. With just a moment’s hesitation, he changed his course and made for the crematorium. Passing the anchor on the way, he skimmed his hand over its whole length, and tried to imagine it rippling and morphing as it apparently had for the dark god Skathis.
When he knocked on Thyon’s heavy, thrice-locked door, the alchemist actually answered it, which could only mean he thought the boy was back with more provisions—or else he was expecting someone else, because as soon as he saw Lazlo, he started to shut it again.
“Wait,” said Lazlo, putting out his foot. It was lucky he wore boots. In the old days of his librarians’ slippers his toes would have been crushed. As it was, he winced. Nero wasn’t playing around. “I come on behalf of Eril-Fane,” he said, annoyed.
“I’ve nothing to report,” said Thyon. “You can tell him that.”
Lazlo’s foot was still in the door, holding it open some three inches. It wasn’t much, but the glave in the antechamber was bright, and he saw Thyon—at least a three-inch-wide strip of him—quite clearly. His brow furrowed. “Nero, are you unwell?”
“I’m fine,” the golden godson deigned to say. “Now, if you would remove your foot.”
“I won’t,” said Lazlo, truly alarmed. “Let me see you. You look like death.”
It was a drastic transformation, in just a few days. His skin was sallow. Even the whites of his eyes were jaundiced.
Thyon drew back, out of Lazlo’s line of sight. “Remove your foot,” he said in a low, casual tone, “or I’ll test my current batch of alkahest on it.” Even his voice sounded sallow, if that were possible.
Alkahest on the foot was an unpleasant prospect to consider. Lazlo wondered how quickly it would eat through his boot leather. “I don’t doubt that you would do it,” he said, just as casually as Thyon. “I’m only gambling that you don’t have it in your hand. You’ll have to go and get it, during which time I’ll push open the door and get a look at you. Come on, Nero. You’re ill.”
“I’m not ill.”
“You’re not well.”
“It’s none of your concern, Strange.”
“I really don’t know if it is or not, but you’re here for a reason, and you may well be Weep’s best hope, so convince me you aren’t ill or I’ll go straight to Eril-Fane.”
There was an irritated sigh, and Thyon stood back from the door. Lazlo nudged it open with his foot, and saw that he had not been mistaken. Thyon looked terrible—though, admittedly, his “terrible” was still a cut above how most people could ever hope to look. Still, he looked aged. It wasn’t just his color. The skin around his eyes was slack and shadowed. “Gods, Nero,” he said, stepping forward, “what’s happened to you?”
“Just working too hard,” said the alchemist with a grim smile.
“That’s ridiculous. No one looks that haggard from working hard for a couple of days.”
As he said it, Lazlo’s eyes fell on Thyon’s worktable. It was a rough-and-tumble version of his table in the Chrysopoesium, scattered with glassware and copper and piles of books. Smoke drifted in the air, a brimstone scent to singe the nostrils, and right in plain view was a long syringe. It was glass and copper, resting on a wadded white cloth spotted with red. Lazlo looked at it, then turned to Thyon, who returned his stare with stony eyes. What had Lazlo just said, that no one looks that haggard from working hard for a couple of days?
But what if their “work” relied on a steady supply of spirit, and their only source was their own body? Lazlo’s breath hissed out between his teeth. “You idiot,” he said, and saw Thyon’s eyes widen in incredulity. No one called the golden godson an idiot. He was, though, in this case. “How much have you taken?” Lazlo asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lazlo shook his head. He was beginning to lose patience. “You can lie if you want, but I already know your secret. If you’re so damned determined to keep it, Nero, I’m the only person in the world who can help you.”
Thyon laughed as though this were a good joke. “And why would you help me?”
It wasn’t at all how he’d said it in the Chrysopoesium when they were younger. “You, help me?” That had been incredulity that Lazlo dared believe himself worthy of helping him. This was more like incredulity that he should want to.
“For the same reason I helped you before,” said Lazlo.
“And why was that?” Nero demanded. “Why did you, Strange?”
Lazlo stared at him for a moment. The answer really couldn’t be simpler, but he didn’t think Thyon was equipped to believe it. “Because you needed it,” he said, and his words pulled a silence over them both. Here was the radical notion that you might help someone simply because they needed it.
Even if they hated you for it after, and punished you for it, and stole from you, and lied and mocked you? Even then? Lazlo had hoped that, of all the delegates, Thyon wouldn’t prove to be Weep’s savior, deliverer from shadow. But far greater than that hope was the hope that Weep would be delivered, by someone, even if it was him. “Do you need help now?” he asked quietly. “You can’t keep drawing your own spirit. It might not kill you,” he said, because spirit wasn’t like blood, and somehow people went on living without it, if you could call it living. “But it will make you ugly,” he told him, “and I think that would be very hard for you.”
Thyon’s brow creased. He squinted at Lazlo to see if he was mocking him. He was, of course, but in the way he might mock Ruza, or Calixte might mock him. It was Thyon’s decision whether to take offense or not, and perhaps he was just too tired. “What are you proposing?” he asked, wary.
Lazlo let out a breath and shifted straight into problem-solving mode. Thyon needed spirit to make azoth. At home, he must have had a system, though Lazlo couldn’t imagine what it was. How did one keep up a steady supply of something like spirit without anyone finding out? Whatever it was, here, without coming out and asking for it—and revealing his secret ingredient—he had only his own, and he had drawn too much.