The Phoenix Thief

ELEVEN

SHEV CARRIED KILTER downstairs, along the armor-lined hallway, and into a room that gleamed red with the glow of sunlight off richly-grained wood. Tall windows on both sides of the room let the light in between their thick green curtains, and the several tables in the room were covered with books, candles, and leafy plants in pots. Directly opposite the door was a wide stone fireplace. A teakettle hung over the fire, and two bookshelves were set into the wall on either hand. Catrío surrounded Kilter with blankets and pillows on one of the long, low couches before the fire then swept her arms out on either side to present one of the bookshelves.

"These are books! Have you seen any before?"

Kilter nodded from amid his blankets.

"We're off to a good start, then." Catrío put her hands on her hips, then turned around and, lifting a small panel in the wall, pressed one of two round buttons that had been hidden beneath it. The shelves jerked, and then began to slide slowly downwards within the opening in the wall that they were set in, revealing more shelves and books. "Shev showed me this years ago. You can only see five shelves at a time, but there are more stored in the wall. Pushing these buttons slides the shelves up and down so any book you want can come into the opening here. Lovely, isn't it? If we didn't have this, the shelves would be ever so tall, and the only way to reach the higher ones would be to climb a ladder."

Shev set Kilter's injured leg on a cushion-softened stool then joined Catrío by the sliding bookshelf. He reached out a hand to let his leather fingertips graze the backs of the books as they moved, and Catrío smiled at the action.

"Shev likes books. He spends a lot of time in here, and likes me to read out loud to him. That's probably why I talk so much, having read so much to him ever since I was little."

Shev nodded, cheek-plates sliding to narrow his eyeholes into his smile-like appearance. Slowly, he lifted a hand to stroke Catrío's hair. It was strange, seeing something that had torn apart panines and tree limbs move with such gentleness, particularly something made out of metal. Come to think of it, Kilter realized that almost all the metal-man's actions inside the house were as slow and careful as if he expected the floor and things around him to splinter at any moment.

"Oh, you'll like this book. A History of Nautical Advancements In The Early Centuries." Catrío stopped the shelves and pulled out a large book covered with grey fabric. "It's all about boats and things, full of blueprints that let you see how everything's put together. You should learn to read this one, Kilter."

She handed the book to Kilter and he flipped it open to find thick clusters of marks set in rows on the pages, alongside detailed images of strange, curved-bottomed contraptions. Though as structurally different from them as could be, the lines and shapes used to create the boats in this book's images reminded Kilter of the flying machines in his notebook, and he brought the book closer to his face to study them. The sound of Shev squeaking interrupted him, and he glanced up as the metal-man took over Catrío's position at the buttons controlling the shelf. With one hand he pushed down a button, and with the other he beckoned to Catrío. She dug a handful of embroidery thread, bits of paper, and stub of pencil, a few buttons out of her pocket, then a little pad of parchment, and this she held out to Shev. As the metal-man started making his rows of marks on the pad with the pencil, she nodded at the action, glancing at Kilter.

"See that? He's writing. He writes down the words on here, and then I read them."

"Those marks are words?" Kilter let the book about boats fall shut and latched all his attention onto Shev's hand and the parchment. "They mean things?"

Catrío nodded again, then turned the parchment around and sat beside Kilter. She ran her finger underneath the rows of marks. "Shev says 'The book you gave him is too big. You need something simpler. Few people learn to read the way you did.'"