Free In the Mouth of the Whale by Paul McAuley Page A

more prominent, but her gaze was as sharp and unforgiving as ever.
    ‘A trueborn scion has asked for our help,’ she said. ‘Such requests are not only inconvenient distractions; they are also dangerous. If you succeed, it will change nothing. You will go back to harrowing hells. But if you fail, there will be a reckoning we cannot afford. And frankly, I have no doubt that you will fail, as you have failed before. Svern chose you and I can do nothing about it. About the only power he has left is to choose who to send to help other clans, and he retains it only because no one has ever before asked for our help. But I can ask you to think of the greater good. If you still love the Library, refuse to help this scion.’
    ‘I cannot disobey him, Majistra.’
    ‘We are not excused the tithe, even though we contribute to the war effort by making the Library available to all. You could make a significant contribution by joining the army. The arrangements I made are still in place. You would receive a rank equivalent to full navigator, and you would leave your unfortunate history behind. You might even win some measure of glory.’
    ‘But I could not win back my place here.’
    ‘You would win our gratitude. It’s no small thing.’
    Like many who have sacrificed everything to an institution or cause, the Redactor drove herself hard and was unable to forgive or forget the errors of those she believed to be less capable or committed than herself. And she also believed that her wishes were entirely congruent with the best interests of the Library. There was no doubt in my mind that I deserved my punishment, but I also believed that it had become a token in the struggle between the Redactor Svern and the Redactor Miriam, who felt that it was unseemly and dangerous that he should continue to have so much influence after his translation. I resented her for that, and hoped to prove that she was wrong. I was, as the Horse so often said, exceedingly stubborn. And I have to admit that it gave me some small satisfaction to see a moment of anger and uncertainty in her gaze when I said, ‘I have always valued your advice, Majistra. But now I think I should find out what the Redactor Svern wants of me.’
    ‘Do as you will, then,’ she said. ‘But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
    The young novice was waiting for me outside. ‘I have to take you to the Redactor Svern,’ she said. ‘You aren’t supposed to wander about on your own.’
    ‘Have you been there before?’
    She nodded, solemn and serious as young children are, when burdened with a task they don’t fully understand. ‘When I first arrived.’
    ‘Then I know you will remember the way. Lead on.’
    The translation frame was kept in the Redactor Svern’s old office, a square room with a vaulted ceiling down in the basement level. It was otherwise empty, lit only by a horizontal slit of window that gave a view of watery shadows and the silken carpet of silt at the bottom of the moat – the ancient machines that were the heart of the reconstructed Library resided in the basement, and the moat absorbed waste heat generated by their constant activity. The frame stood in the centre of the room, a square window of depthless black that came alive with swarming white glyphs as the novice led me towards it. A moment later I was standing in the courtyard at the entrance to the memory palace inhabited by what was left of the Redactor Svern after his permanent translation.
    As always, it was snowing. Snow sifting out of a black square of sky hemmed by high and windowless stone walls, settling on the cobbles on which I stood, defining the edges of the square-cut stones so that the patterns in which they had been laid were as clear and bright as if outlined in neon. Snow capping the heads and shoulders of the stone lions that stood on either side of the arch that framed a view of a gravelled road lined with stark and leafless trees.
    When I had first been invited there, a novice