The Masked City

“Oh, history,” Silver said, cutting her off. “You’ll be talking about reality next, as if it were something special too.”

It was only a hypothesis, but it made an uncomfortable amount of sense.

“I think my point holds. People want stories. You should know that more than anybody. They want their lives to have meaning. They want to be part of something greater than themselves. Even you, Miss Winters, want to be a heroic Librarian—don’t you? And if you’re going to say that people need to have the freedom to be unhappy, something that’s forced on them whether they like it or not, I would question your motivation.” She paused for a single deadly second. “Most people don’t want a brave new world. They want the story that they know.”

Irene hated trusting to luck. It was no substitute for good planning and careful preparation.

Here and there people sat at desks, carefully turning the pages of manuscripts, or unrolling scrolls and making notes. It comforted her. This is a place built to store books, by people who wanted to preserve books, and used by people who want to read those books. I am not alone.

“My brother and I used to live in Rome,” she invented.

“Rome.” The other woman turned up her nose a little. “Well, I suppose people have to live somewhere.”