Page 22 of The Neverfear

‘I will do as I wish.’ And then the little dragon burst out, in a sudden high wail, ‘I must protest that nobody has consulted me! This plan is an outrageous risk! If I had my fire, it would be different, but this is an imbecility!’

‘Jacques, we’re going. You don’t have to come,’ said Christopher.

‘Nonsense. You are my biographer. You must be with me at all times. But I urge you to reconsider and go home to Nighthand at once. We should not take such a foolish risk!’

‘Not evens,’ said Ratwin, ‘for Irians Guinne?’

‘Not for anybody! Dragons are proud narcissists. Humans are to us acolytes or meals.’

‘And yet you haven’t left us,’ said Anya. The dragon only puffed a great gout of smoke directly down into Christopher’s face, and shut his mouth with a tiny clack.

The largest library in the City of Scholars was more than eight hundred years old. It rose up around a square courtyard, five storeys high, its turrets and pointed windows gesturing ever skywards. At the huge oak double doors was a lectern on which perched a harpy, with a long queue of scholars lining up in front of her.

Before Christopher could stop her, Anya strode past them to the harpy. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘We’d like to borrow a book.’

There was an immediate angry clamour from behind her.

‘There’s a queue, you know!’ said a woman at the back. She had a hat decked with ornamental flowers and a furious face.

Anya looked at Christopher, suddenly unsure. ‘What do they mean?’

‘It’s a queue.’

‘Is that … some kind of dance?’

Sometimes he forgot how long she had spent in a palace and its surrounding grounds; how little of the rest of the world she had seen. She had learned the rules for a princess; the twenty-one official smiles (among them innocent, flattering, deceptively gormless and ominously toothy) and the five approved laughs: delighted, amused, polite, warning and tyrannical. But she had rarely been in a shop, or handled money, or stood in a crowd.

‘It’s a line,’ he said, leading her to the back of it. ‘They’re all waiting to go in.’

She flushed scarlet. ‘Oh,’ she muttered. She put her hand up to her shoulder, where Koo should be. But he was not there, only the cut from Darius’s blade. ‘Another thing I didn’t know.’ She bit her lip and tried to keep her head high. She took hold of her necklace: the loquillan, given to her by her mother. ‘I don’t know anything.’

Jacques sniffed, and flew to eat the decorative flowers from the hat of the woman in front of them. ‘Then you will learn,’ he said.

They came at last to the front of the queue. The harpy – her dark-haired human head on the body of an eagle – looked at them over her spectacles. ‘Children are not permitted in the Ferox Library without special dispensation. Many of the texts here are dangerous.’

‘Dangerous how?’ said Jacques sceptically. ‘Books have no fire.’

The harpy ruffled her feathers. ‘Firstly, not all the texts are books. Some are enchanted mirrors, crystal balls, scrolls and oracles. And secondly, books can do unexpected things. Some do, in fact, have fire: we have an extensive collection of fire-breathing paperbacks.’ She looked past them. ‘Would you step aside? You are causing an obstruction.’

Anya looked in anguish at Christopher. He was wondering if they could make a sprint – leap past the harpy and inside – when from somewhere around Christopher’s ankles a tiny voice spoke.

‘Might I be able to assist you?’ It was a mouse, carrying a miniature leather satchel, a pen tucked behind one ear.

‘Meri!’ said Christopher.

‘The little batrachomyomachian mouse!’ said Jacques. ‘The assistant librarian of Glimt! Delicious.’ He licked his lips, and Christopher glared at him.

But the tiny mouse did not notice; he merely quivered with pleasure from his claws to his whiskers. ‘At your service, dear patrons!’ He spoke very fast. ‘What a piece of luck that we should meet! I came yesterday on the back of a gagana to find a book on the history of the fendthorn, Spina herculis, lest I perhaps be asked to assist with its management. And then I saw you! And I came at once, in case I might by any great luck be permitted to help!’

‘You could help me,’ said Jacques, ‘with my hunger pangs.’

Christopher put his hand, hard, over Jacques’s wings. ‘Thank you, Meri. We need to read everything we can about the Cerberus dog.’

‘Of course! With delight! May I ask why?’

This had not occurred to Christopher. ‘It’s … for a … project.’

‘Of course! A project! A bravura endeavour for a hunter of knowledge and a seeker after that most precious gem, the truth! The Cerberus, Cerberus trifaux, is found only on the island of Great Caruta, so we will go to the Carutan room.’ Meri turned to the harpy. ‘They’re with me. I am an assistant librarian.’