Arm of the Sphinx (The Books of Babel, #2)

by Josiah Bancroft

Chapter One The difficulty with a disguise is that it must be worn for some time before it hangs credibly upon the shoulders. But if worn for too long, a costume becomes comfortable, natural. A man always in disguise must take care lest he become the disguise. —The Stone Cloud’s Logbook, Captain Tom Mudd

Chapter Four Trust is a muscle that works best in reflex. —The Stone Cloud’s Logbook, Captain Tom Mudd

“Now it makes sense why the tapestry is full of symbols, little pictures, and hatch marks rather than letters and numbers. It’s so the locals can read it, so it is of some use to them. You are their historian.” “I am not!” she said sharply. She wagged her bone comb at him. “I am a recorder. A recorder takes things down. A historian makes things up.” He saw that he’d goaded her, and though he was clearly at her mercy, he couldn’t stop himself from arguing the point. “Well, that’s hardly fair.” “I agree. It is unfair. A historian begins with an ending, and then he concocts a pleasing cause. It’s a fairytale.” “That’s a ludicrous accusation. History is the narrative of time, and like any narrative, any story, there are some details that are necessarily glossed over, some that are included under the umbrella of anecdote and analogy. But the thrust of the story is not perverted by small omissions. If anything it is clarified.” “Of course it is clarified! That’s because all the confusing and muddling and disagreeing parts have been removed. It’s clear because it’s untrue! Who are these pious men writing the story of time anyway? To whom are they devoted? Every historian I’ve ever heard of has a benefactor or a master or a duty to his country. History is a love letter to tyrants written in the blood of the overrun, the forgotten, the expunged!” Her former decorum had fallen away entirely now, and Senlin glimpsed in her vehemence her son’s passions. There was a little of that mani...

Chapter Eight I knew a boy in school who rolled out of his bunk in his sleep, struck his head, and never woke again. I console myself with this terrible memory whenever I look down at the chasm that follows me like a shadow. We are, all of us, living at a deadly height. —The Stone Cloud’s Logbook, Captain Tom Mudd

Nancy rushed into the room, followed closely by Iren and Edith, both carrying sacks that bulged with the corners of books. “Please, please,” Nancy said through tears, clutching a thick little book, “don’t take my diary. It is my confidant; it is my little soul. Take the silver! Take the china! Please leave my book.” Her pleading pierced Senlin. He dropped his hold on her father. “I’m sorry we have traumatized you. You may keep your book, Nancy.” “I’m sure my daughter is much consoled. Don’t pretend you have been reasonable. This is not reason. This is violence!” “It is exasperation,” Senlin said, looking sick with loathing and anger. “You robber! You bully! I don’t believe you were ever anything else.” Edith stepped forward briskly and boxed the man on the ear. “That’s enough,” she said as Pencastle swung back around, cradling his ear. “Just because you don’t recognize mercy doesn’t mean you haven’t been shown it.” “But why must he take my books?” the doctor pleaded, his chin gleaming with spittle, his composure utterly shattered. “Because the Tower has asked for them,” Senlin said.

Chapter Ten The man or woman who is rarely lost, rarely discovers anything new. —Folkways and Right of Ways in the Silk Gardens, Anon.

“We have to get to the ship before them,” Edith said. She began pulling up the bedding. “We’ll disguise ourselves with these sheets.” “They’ll spot you straight away.” Voleta said. “That’s why I brought the rope.” “What do you expect us to do with rope?” “Squeeze through the bars and climb down.” “Don’t be mad, Voleta. We’re five, six stories up. Even if we climbed down, there’d be nothing but bars on one side of us and an open field on the other,” Senlin said. “We’d be spotted in an instant.” “That’s why I planned a diversion,” Voleta said, shimmying back into her cloak. “You two will slip out the bars, and I’ll meet you back at the ship.” “We’re not going to leave you to bait a zoo full of armed hods. You’ll come with us. We’ll just have to be discreet.” “It won’t work, Captain. Besides, if you’re really worried about me, I’ll be safer on my own. I’ll be in the trees and halfway home before the fuse runs out.” Senlin blinked. “The fuse?”

the ship looked on the verge of leaving the port, which was something Marat had absolutely forbidden. It took only a little consultation to agree that they would charge the ship before it escaped. The platoon began an orderly trot into the vaulted tunnel, though the men who had swallowed too much smoke soon bent the formation. It mattered little. This was their terrain, and they knew it well. They regularly conducted drills in the shadow of the colossi, though none of the hods felt any reverence for those giants of the old aristocracy, and they expressed their contempt by using those stately heads as targets for their practice. They had pocked many chins and blunted many noses with the pecking of their rifles.

Chapter Two The origin of a myth is like that of a river. It begins in obscurity as a collection of tentative, unassociated flows. It streams downhill along the path of least resistance, seeking consensus. Other fables join it, and the myth broadens and sets. We build cities on the banks of myth. —The Myth of the Sphinx: A Historical Analysis by Saavedra

Chapter Seven Routine is rather like the egg-whites in a batter: it imparts little flavor, but it holds everything together. —The Wifely Way by the Duchess K. A. Pell

The fireplace and mantel were weathered but stately; the velvet upholstery of the club chairs had gone bald at the arms, but the cushions still held their shape. They had two lavatories to share between the four of them, and each of these tiled shrines of cleanliness included an enamel altar in the shape of a clawfoot tub. Adam’s first soaking had tinted the water so noticeably, he felt like a teabag.

Exploring the Sphinx’s home would forever ruin Voleta for unassuming doors. Someday in the far future, she would stand before an ordinary door in an ordinary hotel, and feel an unwarranted thrill of anticipation. And after opening that plain door that promised so much, only to find a broom closet or a sterile bedroom, she would think back to these nights when the Sphinx had spoiled her with surprises.

“Awful man,” Byron said. “I shudder to think of the two of you petting each other over my inebriated sprawl.” “We absolutely did not do that. I fully admit to pouring the rum, but I wasn’t trying to poison you. How was I to know mechanical stags are allergic to liquor?” “I thought we were friends,” Byron said in a voice that shivered with emotion. “I thought we were sharing a drink. I was flattered. I didn’t know I was in the way. You could’ve just asked me to leave, to look the other way. Instead you had to humiliate me.”

Chapter Twenty The lion’s share of blunders occur in the final hour of a job. Pails are kicked, hinges painted over, and brushes lost in the lime. When the end is in sight, mind how you go. —The Art of Painting a Barn by Mr. B. Ritter

Chapter Twenty-One The essential lesson of the zoetrope is this: movement, indeed all progress, even the passage of time, is an illusion. Life is the repetition of stillness. —Zoetropes and Magic Lanterns: An Introduction to Moving Stills

For the first time, it occurred to him that the Sphinx might be utterly mad. If not mad, then at least obsessed. And Senlin had signed a contract with him. He had rejected Marat’s hopeless crusade only to join a man who was jousting with the stars. “If you remember nothing else of what I say, remember this: when humanity ceases to aspire, it begins to decline. Do you know why the status quo is so tyrannical and nauseating? Because it does not exist! There is no stasis in the world, and certainly not where humans are involved. The status quo is just a pleasing synonym for decay. You’ve seen what the Tower inspires: cruelty, apathy, casual violence, self-destruction, and empty gratification. Those are the fruits of the Tower.” Senlin rubbed the furrow in his brow. “I won’t argue with that characterization.” “You cannot. It was not meant to be a tower, a stratum of senseless competition and oppression, a structure that requires war to renew it like a forest needs fire to prosper. What a barbaric thing! The Brick Layer aspired to better. He knew harmony was not a symptom of plenty, or political climate, or even that crushing stalemate your kings call ‘peace.’ Harmony is the result of purpose. So the bridge was imagined, and construction begun.”