Ownage Librarians Ch. 2 Pt. 1

The front door swung open, letting in a gust of autumn wind. Ammi shivered and pulled her coat tightly around her shoulders, fervently wishing they had time to do something about the drafts in the old stone library. She took her time getting to the front desk, reasoning that anyone out and about on a day like today wouldn’t be all too anxious to finish his errands and hurry back out into the weather.
The newcomer, she saw as she rounded a shelf, was a young man, bundled up in a long overcoat against the wind. He had his hands in his pockets and was humming and whistling to himself, horribly off-key without a trace of self-consciousness. He was scruffled and disheveled very purposefully, hitting the “roguishly handsome” look dead in the black. As Ammi approached, he stopped whistling and gave her a dazzling smile.
“Pardon me, mademoiselle, but does a Doux Parler work here? I was told in the town that this was the right place to come.”
Ammi returned the smile, rather more coldly. “Yes, as a matter of fact, he should be-”
Before she could finish, the young man looked over her shoulder and gave a delighted yell, then took off running. Ammi, with a faintly disapproving expression on her face, turned around and saw Doux, who had just emerged from the reference section, step away from the cart and hold his arms out.
“Phoebus!” he called, laughing as the youth grabbed him in a crushing hug.
“Dad! It’s great to see you again!”
Ammi, who had been watching this display with bemused curiosity, turned pale.
“DAD?” she squeaked.
Doux disentangled himself and adjusted his glasses, beaming happily. “Pardon us, Miss Othniel. This is Phoebus. Phoebus, Miss Othniel.”
“Enchante.” Phoebus bowed deeply over Ammi’s hand.
“Likewise,” she said faintly. “Doux, did I hear you correctly? I could have sworn he called you-”
“Oh, I’m not his real father.” Doux laughed. “Goodness, he doesn’t look that much like me, does he?”
“No, but-”
“It’s a long story,” Phoebus interrupted, putting an arm around Doux’s shoulder. “Suffice it to say that he and my mother were very, very good friends after my father… dropped out of the picture. I grew up calling Doux my father and never knew the difference until the day I moved away from home.”
Ammi glanced back and forth between Doux and Phoebus. That morning, had anyone asked her, she would have said that Doux couldn’t have been more than thirty, if that, and yet Phoebus, a strong young man in his twenties, had grown up thinking Doux was his father. Ammi shot a look at Doux, who gulped apprehensively and mouthed “later.”
“Phoebus, what is this?” Doux asked, perhaps just trying to distract Ammi. He pointed to a small pad of bandages over Phoebus’s right eye. “You told me you were staying out of trouble!”
Phoebus touched his forehead guiltily. “Just a scratch, father. A little scuffle with the navy, that’s all.”
“With… the navy? You’re a pirate?” Ammi asked sharply.
“Air pirate.” Phoebus laughed breezily. “Like father, like son – didn’t Doux ever tell you? He had a rather colorful career himself, in the past.”
“No,” said Ammi, peering sternly over her glasses at Doux, who smiled disarmingly, if a trifle nervously. Phoebus smirked at Doux, who gave his ersatz descendant a withering glare.
“Well!” Ammi clasped her hands together briskly. “I can see that you two have a lot of catching up to do…”
Backing away as politely as possible, Ammi left the two men standing in the lobby, chattering rapidly to one another in some foreign language. As she saw it, she was owed some answers, and she doubted she’d get them from Doux any time soon.
********
The back staircase wasn’t exactly off limits to the public, but people were rarely encouraged to go up there. Through the door at the top of the stairs, you would find another sort of library entirely. Here were kept all the rarer or more unusual books – books of magic; volumes of maps to distant or dangerous lands, or perhaps places that couldn’t be found in any normal plane at all; encoded encyclopaedias and bestiaries full of impossible, disturbing biology; battered and ancient tomes in forgotten languages or books richly bound in silk with nothing in them at all. Occasionally, you’d run across a glass case with some priceless, one-of-a-kind work locked inside.
Past these rooms, you came to the sections that really were off limits – newspaper archives from the future, collections of curses and dangerous grimoires that had to be kept under lock and key, and any kind of book that generally required some sort of protective gear to read.
At the back of that room was another small door that locked with a separate key, another staircase, and a tiny suite of rooms in a garret right under the roof. This was where Doux lived, and where Qarp stayed when he was visiting.
Ammi paced along the creaking hallway to Qarp’s door. It was ajar, butting up against a pile of cases, and a string of muttering was coming from inside. It went quiet when Ammi knocked.
“Come in!” Qarp turned around and gave Ammi a harassed-looking smile. “Oh, hello, Miss Ammi. I don’t see you up here very often.”
“What’s all this?” Ammi asked, ignoring his question and pointing to a huge pile of envelopes and paper on the desk. Qarp started guiltily.
“Oh, this? I’m just – hang on a second.” He grimaced and stuck out his tongue, pulling off a stamp which had been stuck to it and inadvertently ingested. “Ugh. Sorry. I’m just writing to my parents.” He held up one hand, which was crisscrossed with paper cuts, stained with ink, and now had a stamp stuck to one finger.
Ammi glanced at the mass and raised an eyebrow. “Been out of touch with them for a while, have you?”
“No…” Qarp looked at the mountain and pulled absentmindedly at the stamp on his finger. “I just have a lot of parents.” He tucked his hair behind his glasses, giving Ammi a wide-eyed look and accidentally sticking the stamp to his earlobe.
Ammi raised an eyebrow as she sat down, perching on the edge of Qarp’s bed. Part of her wanted to ask, but she decided that she had had enough of other people’s family issues for the moment.
“Qarp, how old is Doux?”
The silence that followed lasted for several seconds. Ammi looked up. Qarp was staring out of the window, not meeting her eyes. Finally, he sighed and scratched the scar on his cheek, dislodging the stamp in the process.
“He told me once that he didn’t remember, himself,” Qarp said quietly. “The exact date, anyway. Ammi, Doux was born in the Yellow Age of the Pirates.”
Ammi gasped and bit her lip. The Yellow Age. A time when plagues and curses ran rampant and ancient monsters walked the world. Cursed revenants and abominations from that time were still at large today, though fortunately they were rare – they took hundreds of lives a year. The names of its villains were still invoked as nursery terrors. Be good or Captain Jenry will get you. The Du Sith is coming to eat you up…
“Qarp, he’s not…”
“Dangerous? Contagious? No.” Qarp reinforced that with a firm head-shake. “Whatever curse he has, it’s never hurt anybody. He’s no danger, but it torments him. I don’t know what price it takes for his long life, but… it takes its toll.” Qarp fiddled with a frayed spot on the end of his scarf. “Please, Miss Ammi, for his sake don’t mention it.”
“All right.” Ammi heaved a sigh and stood up, brushing off her skirt.
“What brought this on, anyway?” Qarp pushed the stack of letters into a marginally neater pile. The stamp, which had fallen onto his shoulder, fell down and was caught by the end of his scarf.
“Well, there’s someone called Phoebus downstairs…”
********
As Ammi and Qarp approached the front of the library, they could hear Doux and Phoebus arguing vehemently in several different languages, seemingly at once. Doux, who normally kept his voice quiet inside the library, seemed to have lost his temper. In the excited gabble, only snatches of conversation were comprehensible.
“Father, you know I’m right – Mina and Clowe agree-”
“You’ve spoken to them? Phoebus, you’re putting them in danger –”
“My own brother and sister? I’m not going to shun them, just because of this! And don’t you tell me that they aren’t really, because you know that doesn’t matter. They understand the risks…”
“Tu ne comprends pas!”
“Tu devriez savoir-”
Both of them stopped talking when Ammi and Qarp walked into the room. Qarp nodded.
“Hey, Phoebus.”
“Uncle Qarp. I haven’t seen you in a while. Comment ca va?”
“I’m not even going to try and match that. Doing just fine, thanks.” Pleasantries finished, Qarp looked at Doux. “Something wrong?”
“A private, family-” Phoebus cut in
“No.” Doux gave Phoebus a firm look. “Phoebus, if it is as you say, we cannot afford to keep this in our family.” He looked at his friends and sighed, clenching his fists. “Well, I suppose that you two are owed an explanation…”
********
“My family has always had… an enemy. I do not know what my ancestors did to provoke him, or why he continues to hound my family even today – but he does. I have met him several times before and will meet him again. He does not seem to function in the same time as anyone else. Years may pass before I encounter him again, but he does not forget. But at this very moment, he is closing in on me, and it will not matter to him that Phoebus is not my own flesh and blood. He will confront my son too.
“I told Phoebus this years ago, thinking it would be better to warn him than for him to face his enemy blind. He thought so, as well, but after we parted ways once more, it seems he became determined to face this enemy on his own terms. Since we last saw each other, it seems Phoebus has been learning all he can about our enemy. Phoebus discovered a way to call his enemy to himself.”
“But now,” Phoebus interrupted, hanging his head, “I… I’m afraid. I panicked, like a coward, and in my shame could only think of coming to Father for help.”
For a long time, everyone in the room was quiet, looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. The four of them had moved back upstairs and were now sitting around the table in Doux and Qarp’s small kitchen. Normally it seemed cozy and homelike, if spartan, but now, drafts were rattling the windows and filling the room with winter’s chill. The stacks of books on every surface seemed to be listening, drinking in every word that was said, so that Ammi felt as though she could pick up one of those books and find Doux’s words printed inside.
Ammi cleared her throat, hoping to break the awkward tension.
“Phoebus, I have more than a little experience dealing with the summoning of arcane beings. I’m sure I could help to keep you safe, at least until you feel ready.”
Doux and Phoebus looked at one another, and then shook their heads. “What’s done is done,” Doux said. “I did not think either of us would meet our enemy again for several more years, but if facing him now, together, means that we will not have to face him alone, years from now, then I will gladly meet him today if I must.” He looked up, capturing the gazes of his fellow librarians. “Please, don’t feel yourselves under any obligation to assist us. You are innocent bystanders – he will leave you be. But should you choose, simply having you here will be… a great comfort.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Qarp’s matter-of-fact tone cut through the solemnity in Doux’s words. Qarp came around the table and put his hands on Doux’s shoulders. “Some legendary cursed monster is coming around to beat up on my best friend, and you’re telling me I can go away and forget about it? This is me we’re talking about here, Doux.” He thumped Doux’s shoulders again, eliciting a slight “oof.”
Ammi twisted her hands together in her lap for a moment or two and then looked up. She saw Doux’s face, drawn and nervous, and Qarp’s full of fervent loyalty. She nodded and stood up.
“Well, I suppose I had best get my things,” she said.
“Why?” Doux looked at her over top of his glasses.
“I couldn’t bear it if I came back in the morning to find that he had been and gone in the night, and I had missed him,” she replied primly. “Qarp, be a dear and clear a space in the spare room for me. I won’t be a minute.
********