Chapter 89: The Peculiar Bookshop
I kept my eyes squeezed shut, a willing prisoner in the dark, trying to ignore the monstrous sights of the city. Jared carried me in his arms—I had insisted he only needed to hold my hand, but walking blind was a disorienting, stumbling affair, and being held, for all its awkwardness, felt safer. He was steady, a solid anchor in a world that was trying to tear my sanity apart.
“We’re here,” he said, gently setting me down. I opened my eyes. Before me stood an ancient-looking bookshop, its wooden sign, carved in the shape of a single, heavy tome, weathered and worn by centuries of city grime. Inside, floor-to-ceiling shelves overflowed with books, a labyrinth of paper and ink. I stepped in, my eyes adjusting to the dim, dusty light. The front shelves were filled with cheap, printed volumes—penny dreadfuls, chivalric romances, travelogues, and other popular entertainments. Further back, the real treasures were kept: heavy, leather-bound tomes on mathematics, philosophy, entomology, and astronomy. And in the darkest corner of the shop was a rack of worn, handwritten manuscripts—old account books, sea-captains' logs, alchemical notes—the kind of thing a true scholar might purchase, hoping to glean some forgotten secret from its pages. High above, near the ceiling, a series of cubbyholes were stuffed with rolled-up scrolls. Jared had brought me to the right place. This was a proper bookshop, a place with history, a place with secrets.
But as I looked closer, I noticed something strange. Some of the books, particularly the old manuscripts and scrolls, seemed to pulse with a faint, ethereal light. Curious, I reached out and pulled one of the glowing manuscripts from the shelf. The moment I opened it, a single, vast, bloodshot eye stared back at me from the page. A long, wet, reptilian tongue snaked out from between the pages, and the leather cover sprouted a row of sharp, needle-like teeth, its monstrous maw gaping wide. The tongue licked my hand, its touch slimy and cold. “Aaaahhh!” I screamed, dropping the book in terror. It hit the floor with a dull thud, and the instant its pages slapped shut, the monstrous apparition vanished. Lying on the dusty floorboards was just an ordinary, unassuming book, its faint, spectral glow now almost invisible.
“What is the meaning of this?” a reedy, aged voice, with a strange, rolling accent, called from the back of the shop. A moment later, a small, stooped old man with a face like a wrinkled parchment, a shock of silver hair, and a monocle screwed into one eye emerged from the shadows. He saw the two of us, two grimy, cloaked children, and the book lying on the floor. His face darkened with displeasure. “This is a bookshop, not a playground. We do not abide the rough treatment of our books here. Out with you.”
“I’m sorry! It was an accident!” I said, quickly scooping up the book. “I’ll buy it! Please, I’d like to buy this manuscript.” Though my heart was still hammering against my ribs, I knew this was an opportunity I couldn't miss. A shop like this, a proprietor like him… he would have knowledge. And unlike other scholars, he was a businessman. As long as I had coin, he would answer my questions. And the book… a book that was alive, that had secrets… it was worth the risk. At worst, I would have wasted a bit of money, think of it as an upfront investment to please the shopkeeper.
“You wish to purchase this manuscript?” the shopkeeper asked, his gaze sharpening as he recognized the volume in my hand. A strange, knowing look crossed his face. “Are you certain?”
“Yes,” I said, my own voice surprisingly firm, though I knew this was some kind of test.
“One gold coins and twenty silver pieces,” he said, his voice flat.
“That’s robbery!” Jared gasped beside me. “It’s just an old, handwritten book!”
I immediately put my head in my hands, a groan escaping my lips. This was exactly why I had to come to the bookshop myself. Jared didn't understand how to use money as a tool, a weapon. In his world, a world of shadows and desperation, if something could be stolen, it should never be bought. His understanding of wealth was still stuck in the gutter, limited to a handful of coppers for a loaf of bread.
He didn't yet grasp that some doors cannot be opened with a lockpick, only with a golden key. He didn't understand that while theft could solve the problem of an empty stomach, money could solve problems far more complex—and do so far more easily. It was a consciousness he had not yet developed.
To be fair, I couldn't entirely blame him. The price the shopkeeper quoted for the manuscript was absurdly high; he was clearly trying to extort us. But Jared shouldn't have been so shocked, so obvious in his surprise. His outburst exposed us for what we were, betraying our true station.
The shopkeeper’s eyes narrowed, his suspicion returning. He looked from me to Jared, then back to me. “Are you, by chance, looking for a guide to the flora of the Italian peninsula?” he asked, his voice a low, coded question.
“What?” I stammered, my mind racing. It was a secret password. A test. And I had no idea what the answer was.
Seeing my confusion, the shopkeeper’s face went cold. “I see. My apologies, but this manuscript is not for sale. Please return it to the shelf, and see yourselves out.”
It was no use. I had failed. But I couldn't leave, not without what I had come for. “I want to buy a book,” I said, my voice a desperate plea. “A dictionary.”
“A dictionary?” The shopkeeper paused, a flicker of avarice in his eyes. Business was business, after all. “And what kind of dictionary would you be looking for?”
"Take a look at these words, if you please," I said, producing a slip of paper. "I need a dictionary for this."
It was a note I had prepared just moments before with a stolen quill and a bit of parchment Jared had lifted. On it, I had carefully copied several of the symbols from the witch's grimoire. To ensure I revealed nothing of its true contents, I had been careful. I had copied single symbols from different pages, chosen at random, ensuring they formed no coherent sentence, no meaning that could be pieced together.
The old man took a magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket and peered at the paper. “Hmm,” he murmured, his voice a low, thoughtful hum. “Old Latin. A rare tongue. I happen to have a dictionary. Two silver sovereigns.” Two silver sovereigns? After the king's ransom he had demanded for the manuscript, the price seemed almost… reasonable. It was a classic haggler's trick, to set an impossibly high price for one item to make another seem cheap. “There are many dialects of Old Latin,” the shopkeeper explained, seeing the hesitation on my face. “If you buy the wrong version, your translations will be flawed. My collection is comprehensive. You will not find its equal elsewhere in this city.”
“Fine,” I said, my head swimming. “I’ll take it. And an English dictionary. And a map of Candon.” I might as well get it all done at once.
The so-called Old Latin dictionary would, of course, be a translation into Castilian—a language I still couldn’t read. Therefore, I would need the English dictionary as a final key, a Rosetta Stone to decipher the sounds of the local tongue. It was a maddeningly convoluted process, a testament to my own ignorance. This, I suppose, is the true misery of being a stranger in a strange land: to be surrounded by knowledge, yet unable to grasp it.
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