CHAPTER 176

"I may have told someone I was the Rat Queen, and they've accepted it." As she walked past the rats, she used some of her feet to pat them on either the head or shoulder. They seemed to enjoy the acknowledgement, then fell in line behind her. "So this is Yuki's tower."

"Indeed." Sofia's voice was distorted as she knelt down to walk through the portal. "We'll find what we're looking for upstairs."

Eulalie looked over toward the spiral staircase along the wall. "That thing doesn't have a railing," she noted. "Clear OSHA violation."

"The last occupant used to turn things to stone because they pissed her off," Zel replied. "And I would also point out that this was a home, not a place of employment."

"Fair." Eulalie grinned. "So a whole stash of magic weapons upstairs?"

Zel nodded. "I would show you myself, but I'm in no condition to climb the stairs."

"Because you're pregnant?" Eulalie's eyes flicked to Zel's stomach. She didn't know enough about horse anatomy to tell if Zel was showing yet. "I'm fairly certain pregnant women are capable of climbing stairs."

Zel started to say something, but Sofia interrupted.

"She's just pulling your tail," she said. "I think it's because she's settling in, now we get to see the spider behind the mask."

"I would like to point out that I'm a centaur, not a woman." Zel scrunched up her face. "If you have any questions about the difference, I'd be happy to enlighten you."

"Actually, I find centaur reproduction extremely fascinating, because the dichotomy between human babies and foals--" Eulalie was interrupted by Sofia's hand over her mouth.

"Magic weapons," Sofia reiterated. "Stay on task."

Eulalie nodded and moved toward the stairs. She spread her legs wide and ascended with half her legs on the steps and the other half on the wall. The feel of stone and grout beneath her feet tickled.

"So, is there a good reason why you're trying to antagonize Zel?" Sofia asked once they were up a floor.

Eulalie frowned. "Habit, I suppose. Like me, she's essentially human from the waist up. I guess maybe I felt a connection like I do with my sister, an extra level of familiarity."

"You have to earn that familiarity," Sofia scolded. "You barely know her. And don't talk about her pregnancy. From what I've heard, she's really shy about it."

"What do you mean?"

"She doesn't like talking about it. Any time someone brings up her pregnancy, she changes the subject right away."

"Why wouldn't she want to talk about it?" Eulalie asked. "I was under the impression that some women love the attention."

"Based on what, may I ask?"

Eulalie shrugged. "The internet, which I admit isn't always accurate. Certainly it doesn't help that my only exposure to it is how it's portrayed in movies and magazines. Pregnancy has always fascinated me. Can you imagine having a living thing inside your body? Moving around, displacing your guts. My mother said that she felt something similar, but those were eggs developing, not a baby, so I imagine it's different."

Sofia paused for a moment, her hand on the wall as if leaning on it for support.

"I'm not certain how, but did I say something wrong?" Reading body language had always been difficult for Eulalie. Her father had been largely unreadable, a man who preferred to stew quietly on things. Her mother and sister were easier, but only because they shared morphology. Sofia's larger-than-normal size was easy to relate to Bigfoot, and right now she stood like her uncle would when coming across a dead animal with a hunter's arrow in it. Uncle Foot wasn't opposed to hunting by any means, but the idea that someone had shot the animal and allowed it to wander off and suffer was something that hurt him deeply.

"It's tough to talk about, but if I've learned anything about you, it's that you won't just let it go." Sofia turned around, her cheeks red and her jaw set. "When I first came to the Library, I wasn't a librarian. Not a full-fledged one, anyway. More of a volunteer."

Eulalie nodded, urging the cyclops to continue.

"My job was to read books to the children. There were so many of them, from all kinds of races." Sofia turned to the nearest window and looked outside with her hands on the sill. "I loved children, wanted to have some of my own one day."

Eulalie almost interrupted, wanting to point out that Sofia didn't seem like the maternal type. In the silence between words, it dawned on her that this would be the worst thing she could say. Data was easy, but people were hard. She liked Sofia because the cyclops reminded her a bit of her mother, and was generally easy to read. Only having one eye seemed to limit her facial expressions, which was also something she preferred.

"When the Order came to the island of my people, nobody was spared. Founded by the more peaceful members of my species, it had become a cultural center for man and monster alike. This was a line they could not tolerate us to cross." She wiped a tear from her eye, then gritted her teeth together as if in pain. "They killed everyone they could find, regardless of age. The Order can hide under the pretense of keeping the peace, but I've suspected for many centuries that their real target was the Library. They didn't expect it to be so well defended, nor the nearby community to be ready to fight back."

"That's horrible." The thought of any thinking creature deliberately targeting children made Eulalie's blood boil. She had been online long enough to encounter all kinds of child predation, and had even strongly debated traveling a hundred miles to rip the head off of one in Bend, Oregon. After an argument with her father, she had settled on outing him to the authorities, which was far less satisfying than pulling his spine through his asshole would have been.