“No,” said Master Hyrrokkin. “Not in any way.”
Lazlo smiled and went back to the receipts. Well, that word made them sound dull, even in his head. They were old cargo manifests, which sounded marginally more thrilling, from a time when the palace had been the royal residence and goods had come from every corner of the world. He wasn’t archiving them. He was skimming them for the telltale flourishes of a particular rare alphabet. He was looking, as he always was on some level, for hints of the Unseen City—which was how he chose to think of it, since Weep still brought the taste of tears. “I’ll go in a moment,” he assured Master Hyrrokkin. It might not have seemed like it, but he took the old man’s words to heart. He had, in fact, no wish to end his days at the library—half blind or otherwise—and every hope of earning his squint lines by looking at the horizon.
The horizon he wished to look at, however, was very far away.
And also, incidentally, forbidden.
Master Hyrrokkin gestured to a window. “You’re at least aware, I hope, that it’s summer out there?” When Lazlo didn’t respond, he added, “Large orange orb in the sky, low necklines on the fairer sex. Any of this ring a bell?” Still nothing. “Strange?”
“What?” Lazlo looked up. He hadn’t heard a word. He’d found what he was looking for—a sheaf of bills from the Unseen City—and it had stolen his attention away.
The old librarian gave a theatrical sigh. “Do as you will,” he said, half doom and half resignation. “Just take care. The books may be immortal, but we are not. You go down to the stacks one morning, and by the time you come up, you’ve a beard down to your belly and have never once composed a poem to a girl you met ice-skating on the Eder.”
“Is that how one meets girls?” asked Lazlo, only half in jest. “Well, the river won’t freeze for months. I have time to rally my courage.”
“Bah! Girls are not a hibernal phenomenon. Go now. Pick some flowers and find one to give them to. It’s as simple as that. Look for kind eyes and wide hips, do you hear me? Hips, boy. You haven’t lived until you’ve laid your head on a nice, soft—”
Mercifully, he was interrupted by the approach of a scholar.
Lazlo could as easily will his skin to turn color as he could approach and speak to a girl, let alone lay his head on a nice, soft anything. Between the abbey and the library, he had hardly known a female person, much less a young female person, and even if he’d had the faintest idea what to say to one, he didn’t imagine that many would welcome the overtures of a penniless junior librarian with a crooked nose and the ignominious name of Strange.
The scholar left, and Master Hyrrokkin resumed his lecture. “Life won’t just happen to you, boy,” he said. “You have to happen to it. Remember: The spirit grows sluggish when you neglect the passions.”
“My spirit is fine.”
“Then you’re going sadly wrong. You’re young. Your spirit shouldn’t be ‘fine.’ It should be effervescent.”
The “spirit” in question wasn’t the soul. Nothing so abstract. It was spirit of the body—the clear fluid pumped by the second heart through its own network of vessels, subtler and more mysterious than the primary vascular system. Its function wasn’t properly understood by science. You could live even if your second heart stopped and the spirit hardened in your veins. But it did have some connection to vitality, or “passion,” as Master Hyrrokkin said, and those without it were emotionless, lethargic. Spiritless.
“Worry about your own spirit,” Lazlo told him. “It’s not too late for you. I’m sure plenty of widows would be delighted to be wooed by such a romantic troglodyte.”
“Don’t be impertinent.”
“Don’t be imperious.”
Master Hyrrokkin sighed. “I miss the days when you lived in fear of me. However short-lived they were.”
Lazlo laughed. “You had the monks to thank for those. They taught me to fear my elders. You taught me not to, and for that, I’ll always be grateful.” He said it warmly, and then—he couldn’t help himself—his eyes flickered toward the papers in his hand.
The old man saw and let out a huff of exasperation. “Fine, fine. Enjoy your receipts. I’m not giving up on you, though. What’s the point of being old if you can’t beleaguer the young with your vast stores of wisdom?”
“And what’s the point of being young if you can’t ignore all advice?”
Master Hyrrokkin grumbled and turned his attention to the stack of folios that had just been returned to the desk. Lazlo turned his to his small discovery. Silence reigned in the Pavilion of Thought, broken only by the wheels of ladders and the shush of pages turning.
And, after a moment, by a low, slow whistle from Lazlo, whose discovery, it transpired, wasn’t so small after all.
Master Hyrrokkin perked up. “More love potions?”
“No,” said Lazlo. “Look.”
The old man performed his usual adjustment of spectacles and peered at the paper. “Ah,” he said with the air of the long-suffering. “Mysteries of Weep. I might have known.”
Weep. The name struck Lazlo as an unpleasant twinge behind his eyes. The condescension struck him, too, but it didn’t surprise him. Generally, he kept his fascination to himself. No one understood it, much less shared it. There had been, once upon a time, a great deal of curiosity surrounding the vanished city and its fate, but after two centuries, it had become little more than a fable. And as for the uncanny business of the name, in the world at large it hadn’t caused much stir. Only Lazlo had felt it happen. Others had learned of it later, through a slow trickle of rumors, and to them it just felt like something they’d forgotten. Some did whisper of a conspiracy or a trick, but most decided, firmly closing a door in their minds, that it had always been Weep, and any claims to the contrary were nonsense and fairy dust. There just wasn’t any other explanation that made sense.
Certainly not magic.
Lazlo knew that Master Hyrrokkin wasn’t interested, but he was too excited to mind. “Just read it,” he said, and held the paper under the old man’s nose.
Master Hyrrokkin did, and failed to be impressed. “Well, what of it?”
What of it? Among the goods listed—spice and silk and the like—was an entry for svytagor blood candy. Up until now, Lazlo had only ever seen it referred to in tales. It was considered folklore—that the river monsters even existed, let alone that their pink blood was harvested as an elixir of immortality. But here it was, bought and paid for by the royal house of Zosma. There might as well have been an entry for dragon scales. “Blood candy,” he said, pointing. “Don’t you see? It was real.”
Master Hyrrokkin snorted. “This makes it real? If it was real, whoever ate it would still be alive to tell you so.”