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“Zani?” Will asked. “What the heck was that?”

“It’s a codex of curses,” she said. “Nothing you want to mess with. I’ve never seen such a detailed breakdown. I didn’t even know there was a spell for the infliction of toe weevils.”

Two hours later, they were the only ones left in the library. Or so they thought.

The voices reached them before the footfall. Two men, moving through the corridor above, their words carrying down the stone stairwell. The quirky acoustics were playing tricks on them. The men sounded much closer than they were.

Zani held up a hand. Buffalo froze, just before his hand contacted a bronze statue on a pedestal. Everyone went still.

“—three shipments in the last month alone. The Phoenician merchant was furious, absolutely furious. He’d been promised copies. He paid a fortune and even brought a letter from the governor⁠—”

“And Callimachus simply refused?”

“Didn’t even acknowledge the letter. The scrolls were catalogued as received and then—” The voice dropped, not from caution so much as bewilderment. “—gone. Into the warehouses, presumably. Like everything else.”

“How many texts have vanished, do you think?”

“Paulos.” The second man’s voice was weary. “In the last eight months alone, I have logged eight hundred and twelve scrolls seized at the harbor. I have been able to locate, on the shelves, sixty-three of them. Sixty-three.”

A pause.

“The rest…”

“Go into the warehouses. And never come out. Nor are any copies made.” The second voice dropped further. “I went to the southern warehouse last week. I asked one of the stewards about the Babylonian star charts. One of our patrons had enquired about them, I had a legitimate reason. The steward was pleasant. Told me the warehouse was undergoing reorganization. Said to come back in a month.” A short, humorless exhale. “I have been told to come back in a month for the better part of two years.”

“He’s been doing this for a long time,” the first man, Paulos, said. “Quietly redirecting the odd text, yes. We all understood that. Some accumulation, some personal interest, these things happen. But this is different. Things have been different ever since the day that pirate ship was searched.”

The footsteps slowed.

“The pirate ship?”

“Whatever it was. They called it a pirate vessel.” Paulos’s voice had acquired a careful flatness. “Callimachus was at the docks himself before the harbor master had finished his report. I have never, in my forty years of tenure here, seen that man move so quickly.

“He was there in under an hour. Whatever came off that ship, he kept it for himself. No catalogue entry. No witnesses who will say what it was. I asked Demetrios—you know Demetrios, he works on the acquisitions crew. He said Callimachus sent everyone out before the last crate was opened.”

“What was in the crate?”

“Nobody knows. That is precisely the point.” A pause. “It’s here somewhere. In this building. I am certain of it. I have been through every chamber I have access to, and I know this library as well as any man alive. Whatever it was is here, and I cannot find it.”

“You think he’s hidden it.”

“I think,” Paulos hesitated, as if he were choosing his words carefully, “that Callimachus is considerably more powerful than anyone in this institution is willing to openly acknowledge. If he doesn’t want something found, it won’t be found. He could leave it out on a shelf in plain sight and every one of us would walk past it every day and see nothing.” He let that opinion settle with his colleague before going on. “He was already old when this library was founded. Whatever he has been doing all these years has kept him here for more years than is natural.”

“I heard that he’s consuming the books. Eating the texts right off the page. That’s how he’s still alive. My friend who used to work at the warehouse says all the scrolls in there are blank. He says Callimachus ate them. That’s why they won’t let anyone in.”

“I don’t know what it is and I have stopped asking questions, but I will say something has changed in the past seven years. Ever since that ship.”

The second man said nothing, waiting.

The voices faded around a corner.

The four of them stood in the dark without speaking.

It was Amrita who broke the silence, and only barely. “How old exactly,” she whispered, “would Callimachus be today?”

“Who the heck is Callimachus?” Buffalo asked.

“You mean you don’t know?” Will rolled his eyes as if it were common knowledge. “He compiled the Pinakes. The great catalogue—the western world’s foundational text of organized scholarship.”