The Masked City (The Invisible Library #2)(42)
Her gaze ran along the group. Irene worried that it delayed a little too long on her. Paranoia only makes you look suspicious, she reminded herself. She really, really wanted a notebook. This was going to have to go into the files at the Library as soon as she had the chance. It was absolutely vital background information for any close dealings with Fae or visits to high-chaos alternates. Of course you had to be indulging in this sort of hare-brained interaction with Fae in the first place to get this kind of information - which would explain why it wasn’t already there.
And providing such information might even soften any reprimands that could be coming her way. No, that would be coming her way.
Assuming she survived to provide the information.
‘I understand that you have all so far been limited to one sphere, or perhaps visited some local ones,’ Aunt Isra went on. ‘Would this be correct?’
General nods and murmurs of, ‘Yes, madam.’
‘You may address me as Aunt Isra,’ she said again. ‘Now, I think it’s likely you will only rarely have mingled with the great among us.’
The man in the red silk raised his hand. His clothing was cut to flatter his body (and did so very well indeed) and his hair hung in blond waves over his shoulders, draping elegantly to conceal one eye. ‘Madam - Aunt Isra - I have been fortunate enough to attend at my patron’s court for many years now, in the more median spheres, and he is a great and mighty lord—’
‘And by saying as much you betray its littleness and his weakness!’ the woman snapped. Her eyes shone like black diamonds. ‘Fool of a boy, have you not felt these spheres shake, as the Rider and his Steed passed through them? So tremble all worlds of lesser virtue when the great move among them. Those spheres will not - cannot - endure the power of the mighty. The sphere to which we travel is one of higher virtue and will be able to stand their presence. I say again that you will rarely have encountered the great among us, because the sphere of your nurturing could not have contained them for long. Boy, your name!’
‘Athanais the Scarlet,’ the man murmured. He rose to his feet and swept a bow.
‘Turn and apologize to your brothers and sisters for wasting their time with such a foolish question,’ Aunt Isra ordered him. ‘Think yourself lucky that I do not whip your hands to help you remember the lesson.’
Still standing, Athanais turned to Irene and the others. ‘I apologize for wasting your time with a foolish question,’ he murmured, bowing again. ‘Please forgive me.’
Amid the general embarrassed mutters of Apology accepted, think nothing of it, Irene mentally slapped herself. She’d been so preoccupied by Silver’s over-the-top libertine persona that she’d never really bothered to think about Fae who liked other sorts of roles when constructing their stories. They might still be the centre of their own narrative, but that didn’t mean they had to be the ‘hero’ or the ‘villain’ of the overarching tale. There were other roles for them to take, roles that were probably quite not so immediately destructive to those around them. (Though she’d hate to make a mistake in any class run by Aunt Isra. It looked as if it would be painful.) But she’d been unconsciously assuming that they’d all play out their games in the same way that Silver did his, always casting themselves as the main protagonist.
Aunt Isra was Fae, but she was also a teacher and a storyteller by nature. There had to be a way in which Irene could use this.
Aunt Isra nodded. ‘Be seated again. Well now, as I was saying, you will have had little to do with the great among us, nor will you have spent time in a sphere of high virtue - or so I was told?’ She glanced around the group and, when everyone nodded, Irene joining in, she smiled thinly. ‘Ah, this will be a new threshold for you all!’
The woman in the suit raised her hand. ‘Aunt Isra, may we ask questions?’
‘As long as they are intelligent ones,’ Aunt Isra said, not very helpfully.
The woman nodded. ‘We’ve all lived in the wake of our patrons, Aunt Isra, and followed their paths. We therefore have some understanding of what it is to be caught in the “story” of another of our kind - at least, that was the phrasing my superior used. How much … um, bigger is the effect when facing one of the great—’ She was clearly looking for some diplomatic way to say how much worse, and Irene herself dearly wanted to know the answer to this one.
Aunt Isra sniffed. The harsh light now coming in through the windows cast her features into strict lines of contrast and shadow. ‘Certainly you can flee, young woman, and retreat back to whatever sphere you came from. No doubt there will be humans there who will feed you sufficient adoration to keep you alive. But it will be no more than living. Once you have tasted the full wine of following in the steps of the great ones, nothing less will content you. Once I - I myself! - was but a humble maiden who bore her sword in the service of the great Caliph al-Rashid. All things seemed possible to me then. I will admit that I had lovers - nay, even friends - among the humans. I could live within that petty sphere because I did not realize how much was to be had outside it.’
Beyond the window was desert, punctuated by cacti, tumbleweeds and thin stony paths. The sun burned down on it from a cloudless sky.
Aunt Isra’s voice had shifted into the rising and falling patterns of a story. ‘But then I told a tale that set a Djinn free, and I travelled thrice across the shifting sands with friends to answer its questions. I walked the paths that lead from Paradise to Hell, and I made five choices at their doors. I gave a hero the reins to a horse that galloped faster than the wind. I knelt at the feet of an emperor who ruled five worlds, and I told him a story that brought doom on one of them, but saved another. I lay in the arms of the ocean and bore her a child. And once I had done all these things, my children, I saw how little it was worth to be - to be merely a person who had the name that I once had. What are humans, compared to the wine of life, which is found by living as we do? I am what I am, and now I have no desire to be less.