“You do speak a lot of languages.”
Dorian sighs and looks down at the book in his hands and then at the man in the cage on the wall and then back at Zachary.
“You look like you want to leave,” Zachary says and Dorian’s expression immediately shifts to one of surprise.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” he says, and he holds Zachary’s gaze for a moment before turning his attention to Sweet Sorrows.
Zachary is midway through Fortunes and Fables wondering if there is more than one Owl King when Dorian suddenly looks up at him.
“This…this boy in the library, with the woman in the green scarf. This is me,” he says.
“You are having a much calmer reaction to being in the book than I did.”
“How…” Dorian starts and trails off, still reading. A minute later he adds, “It’s only that part at the beginning, I never did any of these other tests.”
“But you were a guardian.”
“No, I was a member in high standing of the Collector’s Club,” Dorian corrects without looking up from the page. “Though I would gather that the club is an evolution of this. There are…similarities.” Dorian looks up from the book and around the room, at the bookshelves and the painting and the door out to the hall. A cat passes by without so much as glancing inside. “Allegra always said we had to wait until it was safe and secured. She told me that for years and I believed her. ‘Safe and secured’ was a constantly moving goal. Always more doors to close and more problematic individuals to eliminate. Always soon and never now.”
“Is that what the whole Collector’s Club believes?”
“That if they do what Allegra tells them for long enough they will earn their place in paradise which is—as Borges supposed—a kind of library? Yes, they do believe that.”
“That sounds like a cult,” Zachary observes.
To his surprise Dorian laughs.
“It does indeed,” he admits.
“Did you believe all that?” Zachary asks.
Dorian considers the question before he responds.
“Yes I did. I believed. Steadfastly. I accepted a lot of things on faith and there came a night that made me question everything and I ran away. I disappeared. That did not go over well. They froze my cards under all my aliases, made some versions of me no longer exist and put others on watch lists and no-fly lists and all sorts of lists. But I had a great deal of cash and I was in Manhattan. It’s easy to stay lost in Manhattan. I could walk around midtown in a suit with a briefcase and I’d vanish into the crowd though I was usually going to the library.”
“What changed your mind?” Zachary asks.
“Not what. Who. Mirabel changed my mind,” Dorian says and before Zachary can inquire further Dorian returns his attention back to the book, the conversation pointedly and clearly halted.
They read in silence for some time. Zachary sneaks occasional glances at Dorian, trying to guess where he is in the book based on eyebrow reaction.
Eventually Dorian closes Sweet Sorrows and puts it down on the table. He frowns and holds out a hand and Zachary gives him The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor without a word and they return to reading.
Zachary is lost in a fairy tale (wondering what kind of box the story sculptor hid what he’s guessing was Fate’s heart inside) when Dorian closes the book.
Slowly they attempt to sort through a thousand questions. For every connection they make between one book and another there are more that don’t fit. Some stories seem completely separate and distant and others feel explicitly connected to the story they have found themselves in together now.
“There was…” Dorian starts but then pauses and when he continues he addresses the man on the wall instead of the man sitting across from him. “There was an organization that was referred to as the Keating Foundation. Never publicly, it was an in-house term. I never knew its origin, no one was ever named Keating but it can’t be a coincidence.”
“The library had this marked as a gift from the Keating Foundation,” Zachary says, holding up Sweet Sorrows. “How were they related to the Collector’s Club?”
“They
worked in opposition. They were…targets to be eliminated.” Dorian pauses. He stands and paces the room and Zachary has a sudden sense of the cage in the painting not being restricted to the wall.
“What did your crypt book tell you again?” Dorian asks, pausing to pick up The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor and flipping through it while he paces.
“There are three things lost in time. A book, a sword, and a man. Sweet Sorrows must be the book, since Eleanor gave it to Simon and then it spent, what, a hundred years on the surface? The instructions said ‘find man’ and not ‘find man and sword’ so maybe the sword has already been returned, too. There’s a sword in the Keeper’s office, hanging all conspicuous in plain sight.”