The two friends split a wad of bitter chafe and thoughtfully chewed the fibers, until the silence seemed to overwhelm them. They could no longer hear even the scrabbling and whickering of the three youngsters. The letterbugs had vanished as well.
“They’re wandering too far,” Khren said. He squatted, refusing to accompany Jebrassy in his back-and-forth around the stair core. “I should go find them.” But he did not get up. Khren much preferred contemplation to actual movement, even when he was anxious.
“They’re fine,” Jebrassy said. “A shout will fetch them. Patience.”
“How reliable is your glow?” Khren asked.
Jebrassy was about to answer, but they heard soft steps echo and Tiadba appeared, stepping quickly through the balustrade. She wore the same pants and shift tied at the waist that she had worn at the Diurns, and she looked tired. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Gray wardens. I had to go out and around on the first level so they wouldn’t follow. Why would anyone come here, after all?” She peered accusingly at Khren.
“I didn’t say anything,” he responded, spinning two fingers resentfully.
“Of course not,” Tiadba said. “Did you find helpers?”
“Khren recruited three,” Jebrassy said. “They’re green sticks but lively. They’re already out hunting.”
Khren glanced at Jebrassy, still stung, and excused himself to go join them.
“He’s an honest breed,” Jebrassy said when he was out of hearing. “Leaders have to take care with their words.”
Tiadba sniffed. “Grayne tells me the best hunting is above the fiftieth. Those levels have been abandoned for hundreds of generations. For some reason, that loosens the spinebacks even more—so she says. She says—”
“How does she know so much?” Jebrassy asked. “Who talks to her? Tall Ones?”
“ Breedstalk to her,” Tiadba said. “She’s been a sama for a long time. Breeds come to the market from all the Tiers to consult with her. She’s as close to a real teacher as we have. But I was going to tell you—”
A racketing echoed down a long hall, preceding the return of Khren and the three youngsters. More introductions went around, and Tiadba softened the critical tone she had used earlier. The young breeds weren’t shy around a female; if anything, they ramped up their raucous sporting, and it seemed they might explode any moment. Only Nico appeared willing to maintain a kind of philosophic dignity.
“We’ll race! Fifty—that’s near the top,” Shewel called out as he started up the spiral stairs. His voice echoed back. “We could climb out on the roof!” The others followed close behind, but Mash trailed—slower and a little abashed.
“What do we need books for?” he asked. “Even if they’re real, they’d only tell us about the times before there were breeds. Who cares?”
“It’s a game,” Tiadba said. “That’s all. You can read, can’t you?”
“I can riddle any letterbug challenge, as long as it’s fair,” Mash said. “And I can read anything a teacher puts in front of me. I’m big, but I’m not dim.”
The fiftieth level had a desolate, muggy smell that sent shivers down to Jebrassy’s fingers. Just a few levels below the roof of this bloc, the stair core had expanded to almost three times its diameter at the ground floor, making the risers shorter, the steps wider, and perversely increasing the distance they had to climb. He stumbled several times. None of the other stair cores were like this, which increased the feeling of strangeness—an inappropriate place for breeds.
The youngsters did not seem to notice. They had already radiated off, drawing marks in the grit before each hallway they investigated. There were over twelve halls stretching away from the core at this level, and hundreds of niches—all empty. Not even the rustle and flap of lost letterbugs broke the ancient hush. Nothing alive seemed to want to be here.
The three youngsters quickly filled that silence, counting out how many spinebacks they had fruitlessly tugged. Their voices echoed and grew faint the farther they ran, until they could barely be heard at all.
“I’ll leave you two and join them,” Khren said. “Three’s an awkward number, don’t you think?”
Jebrassy was about to protest, but Tiadba thanked Khren and off he went, with some haste. He did not like being around Tiadba, obviously, which did not puzzle Jebrassy—she had not gone out of her way to make friends.
Tiadba took this opportunity to brush his shoulders with her hands. “Did you see?”
“See what?”
“I saw it just before Khren spoke. I wonder if they’ll even notice.”
“Notice what?”
Tiadba pushed him to the angle of an unexplored hall, one the youngsters had not marked. Here, six shelves rose on each side, each stretching ten arm lengths, filling the spaces between niche doorways, outward into the gloom—to the very end of the hall. False spinebacks marched off in solemn relief as far as they could see. “Wait. Look.”
He wasn’t paying attention. Guilty, he leaned forward and forced himself to concentrate on the titles, frowning as he walked along the middle row of spinebacks. “What am I looking for?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level, his tone humble.
And then he saw it. The titles changed—the odd letters seemed to crawl, rearrange, and fix themselves again, as innocent and permanent as he had always assumed they were. The sight did more than startle him. He couldn’t stop himself—he stumbled back and bumped against the shelves on the opposite wall. Then he looked toward Tiadba, ears hot with surprise. Such impermanence in a timeless feature like the false shelves was almost as frightening as an intrusion.
Tiadba did not laugh at him. “Is that what Grayne was talking about?” she asked, awestruck. “Here, everything changes, I mean—because nobody’s watching?”
“We’re watching. Why change it in front of us?”
“I…do…not…know,” Tiadba said, but she reached out and tugged at a false book. Of course, it refused to budge. “Grayne was being too sly. This is a puzzle. We have to riddle it to be worthy.”
“I’m clueless, but that’s always been obvious,” Jebrassy said, ears still warm. “I don’t like it here.”
“Maybe these shelves are showing us what happens everywhere, when the breeds sleep, and we’re too ignorant, too unobservant—or we sleep too soundly—to notice or even care. We could learn these old symbols. We could write them down on shake cloths and then compare them after a few sleeps—”
Jebrassy suddenly caught on. Momentarily forgetting his fear, he returned to the shelf and fingered the spines, but did not tug—presuming he had not earned that privilege, not yet. “The books that couldcome loose, that can be pulled out, are always the same,” he said. “But they move around. The titles move. Is that the secret?”
Tiadba smiled and reached out to pull on a few more spines. No luck. Then she whistled with excitement and raced down the hall.
“Maybe they’re like letterbugs,” Jebrassy said, moving toward her. “Maybe the books on the shelves actually breed. Maybe the titles make new titles—maybe they make new books.”
“I don’t see how it helps to know that,” she called back.
“How couldwe know?” Jebrassy murmured, his shock of discovery dissipating as quickly as it arrived.
“We can’t read them…we don’t know which ones to pull…they shift around or multiply each sleep when nobody’s looking…and that means, since the shelves never grow, some titles vanish… Frass,” he swore.
“It’s a dice game.”
“And the dice are loaded!” Tiadba said. “We can’t win. We’ll never find a book. But Grayne’s sisterhood found a few anyway.” Her face lit up. “Isn’t that the challenge? Isn’t it wonderful?”