Mort

insect-like scotching of the books as they wrote themselves.
    Once upon a time Mort would have found it eerie. Now it was—reassuring. It demonstrated that the universe was running smoothly. His conscience, which had been looking for the opening, gleefully reminded him that, all right, it might be running smoothly but it certainly wasn’t heading in the right direction.
    He made his way through the maze of shelves to the mysterious pile of books, and found it was gone. Albert had been in the kitchen, and Mort had never seen Death himself enter the library. What was Ysabell looking for, then?
    He glanced up at the cliff of shelves above him, and his stomach went cold when he thought of what was starting to happen….
    There was nothing for it. He’d have to tell someone.

Keli, meanwhile, was also finding life difficult.
    This was because causality had an incredible amount of inertia. Mort’s misplaced thrust, driven by anger and desperation and nascent love, had sent it down a new track but it hadn’t noticed yet. He’d kicked the tail of the dinosaur, but it would be some time before the other end realized it was time to say “ouch.”
    Bluntly, the universe knew Keli was dead and was therefore rather surprised to find that she hadn’t stopped walking and breathing yet.
    It showed it in little ways. The courtiers who gave her furtive odd looks during the morning would not have been able to say why the sight of her made them feel strangely uncomfortable. To their acute embarrassment and her annoyance they found themselves ignoring her, or talking in hushed voices.
    The Chamberlain found he’d instructed that the royal standard be flown at half mast and for the life of him couldn’t explain why. He was gently led off to his bed with a mild nervous affliction after ordering a thousand yards of black bunting for no apparent reason.
    The eerie, unreal feeling soon spread throughout the castle. The head coachman ordered the state bier to be brought out again and polished, and then stood in the stable yard and wept into his chamois leather because he couldn’t remember why. Servants walked softly along the corridors. The cook had to fight an overpowering urge to prepare simple banquets of cold meat. Dogs howled and then stopped, feeling rather stupid. The two black stallions who traditionally pulled the Sto Lat funeral cortege grew restive in their stalls and nearly kicked a groom to death.
    In his castle in Sto Helit, the duke waited in vain for a messenger who had in fact set out, but had stopped halfway down the street, unable to remember what it was he was supposed to be doing.
    Through all this Keli moved like a solid and increasingly more irritated ghost.
    Things came to a head at lunchtime. She swept into the great hall and found no place had been set in front of the royal chair. By speaking loudly and distinctly to the butler she managed to get that rectified, then saw dishes being passed in front of her before she could get a fork into them. She watched in sullen disbelief as the wine was brought in and poured first for the Lord of the Privy Closet.
    It was an unregal thing to do, but she stuck out a foot and tripped the wine waiter. He stumbled, muttered something under his breath, and stared down at the flagstones.
    She leaned the other way and shouted into the ear of the Yeoman of the Pantry: “Can you see me, man? Why are we reduced to eating cold pork and ham?”
    He turned aside from his hushed conversation with the Lady of the Small Hexagonal Room in the North Turret, gave her a long look in which shock made way for a sort of unfocused puzzlement, and said, “Why, yes…I can…er….”
    “Your Royal Highness,” prompted Keli.
    “But…yes…Highness,” he muttered. There was a heavy pause.
    Then, as if switched back on, he turned his back on her and resumed his conversation.
    Keli sat for a while, white with shock and anger, then pushed the chair back and stormed away to her chambers. A couple of servants sharing a quick rollup in the passage outside were knocked sideways by something they couldn’t quite see.
    Keli ran into her room and hauled on the rope that should have sent the duty maid running in from the sitting room at the end of the corridor. Nothing happened for some time, and then the door was pushed open slowly and a face peered in at her.
    She recognized the look this time, and was ready for it. She grabbed the maid by the shoulders and hauled her bodily into the room,