Fire Opal Mechanism (Gem Universe) - Softcover

Wilde, Fran

Softcover

ISBN 10: 125019654X ISBN 13: 9781250196545

Verlag: Tor.com, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

The Fire Opal Mechanism is the fast-paced and lively sequel to Fran Wilde's The Jewel and Her Lapidary

Jewels and their lapidaries and have all but passed into myth.

Jorit, broke and branded a thief, just wants to escape the Far Reaches for something better. Ania, a rumpled librarian, is trying to protect her books from the Pressmen, who value knowledge but none of the humanity that generates it.

When they stumble upon a mysterious clock powered by an ancient jewel, they may discover secrets in the past that will change the future forever.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Fran Wilde's short fiction has appeared in Asimov's, Nature, and elsewhere. Her debut novel Updraft, first in the Bone Universe series, was published in 2015 to wide acclaim. She blogs about food and genre at Cooking the Books and for the popular social-parenting website GeekMom. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Fire Opal Mechanism

By Fran Wilde, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2019 Fran Wilde
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-19654-5

CHAPTER 1

ANIA

As the library's enormous clock ticked past four in the morning, Ania Dem paced its shadowed numbers across the cold slate floor, hurriedly sorting books.

Two worn, hand-bound travel guides from Quadril and the Sindarian Peninsula? Beautifully written. Hide these.

The Maniacan Journals about fishing? Boring as sand.

These can be decoys.

In the deep of night, without students' loud hush all around her, the clock's hour hand ground audibly forward. The clock's gears needed oil, but maintenance would have to wait. In a few hours' time, Ania would cart the decoy books across the university square and bid them good-bye.

The Pressmen gathered at Far Reaches University's gates had demanded the university's books repeatedly.

"The information will not be lost! It will be repurposed, becoming part of the Universal Compendiums of Knowledge, for sharing with all, equally," Dean Andol, who had finally conceded, had reassured his staff the afternoon before. "This will buy us more time," he'd added, almost pleading with the teachers assembled in the university square.

Now Ania's usually neat, parchment-colored librarian's robes creased behind her knees. Sweat darkened seams and pleats, but she didn't stop gathering books. She ventured back to the stacks and returned, arms laden with more old texts.

The Collected Biographies of Far Reaches University Presidents: The First Hundred Years? Decoy.

"In the Master Archivist's absence, you must bring books of good number and quality," Dean Andol had added, handing Ania a stack of flyers without meeting her eyes. He'd pointed to carts waiting at the edge of the square. "When we indicate goodwill toward the Pressmen, then perhaps they'll let us finish the term, for the students' sakes."

She'd taken the flyers. Locked the library doors. And then she'd gone to work.

The Book of Gems: A Catalog of the Jeweled Valley Treasury? Had the ancient gems, rumored to whisper secrets and shift reality, ever existed? This one glittering, tooled-leather book hinted they might have. Keep.

Ania reached for a brown leather knapsack — the property of the library's Master Archivist — and tucked the gem catalog and the travel guides beneath a shawl.

Dictionaries from across the Six Kingdoms? To sacrifice?

All those words. The thought of Pressmen taking those words from her hands, churning them into pulp and ink, and thus into a full set of constantly current Universal Compendiums of Knowledge filled Ania's stomach with dread. She'd loved books since she was a child playing in her father's study while he taught his classes. Loved how each volume felt different in the hand, heavy or light; that each smelled of a different era, different knowledge; that they had to be handled carefully — like people — but that they were constant, finished — unlike people. How could she give any of them up?

"But the Compendiums could contain everything!" Dean Andol had, the year before, chided the reluctant Master Archivist, Sonoria Vos.

"How does a printing press lay down ink on a page that can twist and rework itself into new forms?" Vos had argued. "And what value do words have across a gap of time if they don't stay put? Books are measures of time. They are made to grow old, to grow, occasionally, wrong."

Ania, listening from the stacks, agreed with her mentor. She liked that books had conversations among themselves. That they, like people, sometimes faded or fell apart when not well cared for. That made them precious.

"The Far Reaches library will not shelve a copy of the Universal Compendiums until I can examine the printing process. There's more to any one book, not to mention all of them together, than any 'compendium' can offer. And the conversations between books are equally important. No book can contain everything, Dean Andol."

The dean had left in a huff, and the library had persevered, at least then. Master Archivist Vos — who'd hired Ania long ago — whispered to her as the man's shadow passed beneath the library's great clock. "Books are most valued when they are curated and sought out. When one reference leads to another. I don't trust the Pressmen's approach. Not even if they threaten the gates of the Six Kingdoms' last university."

Now Far Reaches was the only school of its size still standing. The Compendiums were everywhere. And Sonoria Vos was nowhere to be found.

Ania grumbled as her braid slipped from its neat coil and draped heavy over her shoulder. Universities across the kingdoms had fallen quieter over the years: fewer scholarly exchanges, fewer battles over semantics. The Western Mountains first, then Quadril and its attached states, the Riverward, Bethem-and-Din, and the Eastern Seas.

Her hairpins scattered noisily across the slate. Strands of silver and dark brown sprung free, tickling Ania's face. The braid's rough tail swept the floor. She threw it back over her shoulder like a promise.

Her books would not be taken.

The Pressmen's minions would have to go through Ania first. Like her mentor before her. At least, Ania suspected that was what had happened.

Several years ago, at the start of each semester, books from other libraries had begun arriving, secreted at the bottoms of bags that otherwise contained the usual — students' clothing freshly mended, a date cake for a professor, various bolts of cloth and metals useful for paying the term ahead. Each time, the Master Archivist would pack her knapsack. "Another university is closing. We'll try to save their volumes."

In her absences, Ania covered Master Vos's classes.

More often than not, the older woman would return empty-handed. "Nothing left."

"I should have seen this coming," Ania muttered to the books. She'd been too busy trying to do her job, and Master Vos's too.

Decoys were what she'd bring to the meeting. Master Vos would be proud. Just enough books to sate the Pressmen — Ania hoped — while she preserved the library's treasures.

The early meeting, where Dean Andol would hand over the university's books, loomed like the sunrise. Ania tried to sort volumes into piles even faster. Dictionaries, diaries, catalogs, concordances, essays, letters, stories. Every volume precious enough to the past that someone had toiled over each page's words, whether hand-inked or typeset, the stitching, the binding.

Touching a book, for Ania, was like touching a person's fingertips across the years. She could feel a pulse, a passion for the knowledge the book contained.

Even the decoys.

She brushed the worn cover of one decoy volume — the fishing text. For each lost book, a connection silenced. Her fingers twitched before she pulled her hand back to her collarbone. Felt her own heart beating beneath the sweat-damp cloth.

No. Hesitation stole time better spent elsewhere.

In the predawn dark, Ania bent low beside the latest stack of books she'd decided to save. She tried to lift the stack, but it was too heavy. Instead, she braced her hands against the lowest volume, a thick work on the history of ink, and pushed the entire batch before her like a Far Reaches tugboat might push a mail scow. Slowly, she inched toward the wall that housed the library's distinctive clock. The clock's moon-shaped disc filled the main hall with its...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Tor.com
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 125019654X
• ISBN 13: 9781250196545
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 200
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Braun; https://in.pg.com/contact-us/; ; Sulzbacher Str. 40-50; Schwalbach/Ts.; 65824; Deutschland