The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(39)

“I’m going to go see the Physickists,” she said finally. “And I want you to come. You’re one of them, after all.”

Shearcoil Tower is a perfect shadow of Groangyre, its twin in Pandemonium. Where lumpy, bulbous Groangyre stitches up its heights in cracked leather, Shearcoil is hard and alive, a long, spiraling black narwhal’s horn filled with hundreds of clean white rooms in which Extremely Pleasant and Possibly Flammable Physicks might be practiced. At the very tip-top of the horn perches a peculiar library, a peculiar librarian, and a total devotion to the pursuit of Questing Physicks. Along with Queer Physicks and Quiet Physicks, this discipline completes the Three Q’s that make up the Noblest Study. When your parents remind you to mind your P’s and Q’s, these are the Q’s they mean, and the P’s, too! Children are natural practitioners of the Queer and the Questing, for childhood is nothing but a quest through a queer country. Of course, they often have a good deal of trouble with the Quiet.

When September and Aubergine finally got to the top of the horn, out of breath and aching with the effort of a thousand and more stairs, they saw the Questing Floor stretched out before them, bright lamps lit and a little lunch boiling over the hearth in a burnished pot. Books and scrolls and folios lined the walls in every direction, towering and tapering up to the tip of the horn. Little wisps of clouds played up near the highest shelves. Ladders chased each other lazily around the rotunda. And a little creature lay on her stomach on a stack of diagrams piled up upon a desk much too big for her, littered with papers and inkwells, waggling her feet back and forth while she read. She was quite tiny, little bigger than a footstool, wearing great wide-brimmed black straw hat and a little caramel-colored monk’s habit with ash-colored beads around her neck. She clicked them together idly. Her olive-colored hair was cropped short under her hat. She had a wide brown face and dark green lips to match her hair and fingernails and zebra-like stripes on her skin, peeking out from under her habit.

“Excuse me,” said September, when the creature did not look up at them. She cleared her throat.

The small monk arched her eyebrow at them and returned to her book.

“The sign at the bottom of the stairs said to look for Questing on the one hundred and forty-fourth floor,” she tried again, determined to appear as brave as she could. That was what was called for, she was sure of it. “And Ell said that this was where the Physickists lived, and he’s never been wrong about anything yet, so I do believe you must be a Questing Physickist. My name is September. I want to go on a Quest.”

The monk looked up again. “We discourage casual inquiries. You might try the Bards down on ninety-seven—they dabble in a little of everything, and they’ll sing whatever you like for a penny. I believe they’ve put the Second Law of Dragon Dynamics to some sort of tune. Goodness knows their bassoons keep me up late enough.”

Aubergine spoke softly—so awfully softly September could hardly hear her. “But you are a Physickist? A real one? You … you went to a university, and they put a laurel on your head, and you turned into a respected scholar, and from then on they let you speak up any time you wanted?”

The little monk slapped her hands down on her papers.

“What a gentle voice you have,” she said, her gaze calculating. “I can feel it wrap me up like a woolen scarf, rubbing my cheeks and insisting that it would hardly hurt me to help a poor young girl from out of town.” She hopped down from her papers and off the lip of the desk, using her wide black hat to float a little ways before landing before them. She poked her finger up at Aubgerine. “You’re a Quiet Physickist if I ever heard one,” she accused, but she did not seem terribly upset. Indeed, when Aubergine inclined her head to admit that she was indeed, the tiny girl burst out in a brilliant smile. “Why didn’t you say so? How wonderful to meet a cousin in the Odd Arts! My name is Avogadra, and you … well, I’ll confess I haven’t seen you at any of the conferences. Are you registered with the union or are you a dabbler like those dilettantes down on ninety-seven? Forgive me, I’m just so excited. I’m the only one here, you see.”

“My name is Aubergine, and I have only just begun my Quiet Studies,” the Night-Dodo demurred.

“Nonsense, you’re quite advanced!” Avogadra enthused. “I nearly gave in before I caught myself. And I didn’t even hear you on the stairs! This one I heard clumping through the lobby, but you? Silent. Sublime.”

“Where are the other Physickists?” asked September, who thought she had stepped as softly as possible.

“Doing fieldwork, obviously,” Avogadra said, and hopped down from her book to finally greet them. “We are nearly all Monacielli—that’s what you call a beast who looks like me! We used to hide in the cellars of monasteries, waiting for the brothers to hurry up with the beer-brewing or the mushroom harvest. We’d upset their inkpots and build our houses out of their hymnals and tap their barrels when they had a nice chocolatey porter coming along. But if one of the brothers got lost in the catacombs or the woods beyond the abbey, or if something dreadful befell one—at sorest need, when they’d passed beyond all human aid—we’d come in the dark and show them the way out. The way home. It’s in our blood—we heard their distresses like a rung bell in our bones. We lived reasonably well, but before too long we’d learned a great deal about manuscripts and contemplation, and realized that we had got a fair sight better at it than the monks themselves! So we left. We came to the city, two by two and three by three, and Shearcoil took us in. We made our own rectory, our own cathedral up here. We kept our Complines and our Vespers. When the ink and the beer and the hymnals belong to you instead of to big folk who flap their arms ridiculously when they get upset, it’s not so much fun to spoil them as to use them well and put them away after. And no one else is quite as deft at the Third Q as we. We can’t cut out the part of ourselves that feels the ringing of the bell when our old brothers are lost or in despair. We learned to Quest by following them into all their black places.”