Chapter 145
on the Library step, pages parted like a mouth, amber light dripping, aimed at the gold-bound book in Kompis's lap.
It lunges. The book launches off the step like a dog off a leash, pages snapping. Kompis throws himself sideways, clutching the Lust Codex to his chest. The amber maw clamps on empty air.
The Gluttony Codex grows: pages multiplying, unfolding, a book the size of a door, then a cart, then a house, an amber maw of paper, teeth made of page-edges, hovering in the empty Library.
staring at his own book, horrified.
The maw hunts the crew's Codices:
It lunges at Rougeina, at the rose script up her arm (Envy, written). She Swaps away and it bites a pedestal in half.
It swings toward Smurjan's crimson script-scars. Smurjan walks the Sightline at the book's spine, strikes, and the maw only flinches.
It snaps at Vigolas's chest, where the Greed Codex opened at Brygdar, emerald under his coat. He punches it in the pages, thwack, and it eats the lightning and grows bigger.
from Smurjan's shadow, borrowing Trollmage's Gluttony for sixty seconds out of sheer instinct, and immediately regretting it, clutching her stomach.
watching his own book try to eat his friends. His hands are shaking.
cornered against a pedestal, the Lust Codex in both arms, the amber maw looming over him.
closing his eyes. Thinking, as slowly and carefully as he's ever thought.
opening his eyes. Very calm.
Trollmage walks into the middle of the Library, right under the amber maw, and lies down, flat on his back on the stone floor, hands folded on his belly, the crown sliding off his head and clattering away.
staring.
on the floor, eyes half-closed, voice slow and gentle, talking to the book above him.
hesitating above him, pages twitching, confused.
sinking, slowly, lower and lower toward the troll on the floor.
In the centre of the empty Library, under seventy bare pedestals, a big half-troll lies on his back on the stone with his hands folded, eyes closed, doing nothing. And settling down onto his chest, shrinking as it comes, from a house to a cart to a door to a book, the amber Gluttony Codex curls up on top of him like a cat, pages slowly closing, amber light dimming to a hungry, patient glow.
Up his left hand, the violet Sloth script glows. Under the amber book, the two lights meet, violet and amber, and hold. A hunger that has learned to wait.
Silence. The crew slowly lowers their weapons. Trollmage asleep on the floor, the Gluttony Codex asleep on his chest.
letting out a long breath, sinking down against the pedestal, the Lust Codex still in his arms.
opening the Lust Codex to check it. Gold pages, his own threads written in gold script. He turns them, one, two, three—
A ragged edge. A page torn out. Right in the middle of the book, a strip of torn gold paper, and a few amber flecks on it, like crumbs.
very still.
the first lunge, when Kompis threw himself sideways. One page flapped open, and the amber maw's edge snipped it out, quick as a heron.
waking just enough, seeing Kompis's face, seeing the torn edge. His face crumples.
struggling up on one elbow, the book still on his chest.
Kompis runs his thumb along it. On the page before the tear, the last line of gold script runs right to the edge and stops, mid-sentence:
looking at the sentence that ends at a torn edge, forever. Then at Trollmage, miserable on the floor. He puts the book down, crawls over, and puts a hand on the troll's shoulder.