Flame and Fullmetal
Chapter 43 - The Secret Library
Fire destroyed a mansion, said the lady in Xenotime. That's why fire was bad.
Honestly, Roy thought as he watched the Library's First Branch burn in Central, he wondered what she'd be thinking now. That was probably shock, because libraries didn't just catch aflame and they weren't the sort of place a fight would break out, as well. Only State Alchemists could get in there. Current State Alchemists with their silver pocket watches and they weren't in the business of killing each other (and certainly not in such an obvious place, where the trial may as well be bloodied footprints).
Nor were they in the business of destroying hundreds of years of valuable knowledge (because all alchemists understood the value of such knowledge and knew the books they had access to were precious and few – and sometimes no – more copies of them existed in the world). And yet the library was still burning. And the wind was sweeping through, scattering the ashes as soon as they were born and no alchemist would be able to put it all together again.
And turning ash back into substance was impossible for anyone who wasn't an alchemist. Was possible for some alchemists, even. It was a misconception that ash was the great end: back when they cremated bodies so people didn't try to resurrect them – but none of that worked. Ash could be given back its form. And people could attempt human transmutation without even a cell or atom from the body of the one they tried to resurrect.
But none of that mattered when an entirely library was aflame. And stopping it now wouldn't do a thing even if he could control an inferno that size (and he didn't care to find out when it no longer mattered, because the staff was outside with them and all accounted for and the library wasn't open to the public; they knew there was no-one in there).
They also knew there was no saving it – or the books it housed.
.
Really, they had amazingly poor luck. They checked the other library branches but the paper they were looking for could only be found in that one.
Or could only have been. The entire library was gone now, after all. Save whatever books had been loaned out (and he was amused to find a fair number of them were under Edward's name, but not the one they were after). But that didn't help them find out what the pair of brothers wanted him to know.
He was very tempted to just march back to Xenotime but something was nagging him here.
'Who do you think caused the fire?' Riza wondered aloud.
Maybe that was what it was. Who burned a library to the ground? What information lurked in it shelves that they wanted to hide? And how could they be so sure it was in that library branch and not one of the other four?
But even as they poured over the catalogues, they couldn't work it out. There were too many possibilities, and too few.
.
'Yo.' Hughes, again.
Roy wondered how he managed to run into the man every time he went to Central.
'Please don't whip out photos this time,' he said tiredly, head thumping against the desk.
Mercifully, Hughes didn't. Perhaps because he saw how drained they were.
And Roy didn't even know why he was looking so hard. There was just the nagging feeling of having missed something.
But neither he nor Riza could think what.
'The First Library catalogue,' Hughes hummed. 'So what are you two looking for? Because it's our job to find the culprit.'
That's right. Hughes was in Investigations.
'We're looking for a paper,' Roy said, after a pause. 'It was stored at the First Branch and it was related to an incident we were investigating.'
'Vague.' Hughes grinned. 'You two didn't do a particularly good job in covering your tracks though.' He tapped the papers. 'See? Oil marks on a name tend to be a giveaway. Tringham, huh.' He clicked his tongue. 'I think I've heard of him. Was a State Alchemist. Handed in his watch one day and just left. And then he went AWOL.'
'We were in Xenotime,' Roy explained. 'And most likely the man we went to apprehend was responsible for Tringham vanishing off the face of the earth.'
'Ah,' said Hughes. 'One of those cases, then.'
One of those cases indeed.
'In any case, this has made a huge mess for us.' He handed the catalogue copy back. 'If you manage to find a way to get that file, let me know. We've got a ton of stuff to replace and maybe they can help there as well.'
.
Three days later, Hughes showed up again.
And he came with a woman. A woman with mousy brown hair and glasses and looking uncomfortable in her dark blue and stiff new uniform. 'I've saved you some trouble,' Hughes declared. 'And myself. Meet my newest recruit: Private Sheshka.'
They introduced themselves, a little confused as to why a new Private was brought to meet them.
'Sheshka here was a librarian at the First Branch,' Hughes continued, 'until she was fired for reading on the job.'
'Mr Hughes,' the woman protested.
'Turns out she read every paper and book in the library,' Hughes pressed on, as though he hadn't heard the interruption. 'And remembers them, word for word.'
'Photographic memory?' Riza asked. She sounded sceptical.
'I was told you requested these papers.' Sheshka held them out.
Roy took them, a little sceptical himself. And he frowned when he saw what was in it. 'Letters to my sons?' he read aloud.
'Yes,' said the woman nervously. 'It's quite a sad tale, how a father had to leave his wife and two young sons to seek a living in the big city, and he managed to find a good job but it kept him away from his family and slowly they grew apart…'
Hughes laughed. 'You look confused, Mustang,' he said. 'Sheshka, why don't you tell him about Marcoh's books.'
Roy blinked. Did Hughes know more than he seemed.
But Sheshka's reply drove that thought out of his mind as well. 'Marcoh's cookbooks were very well known before the Ishbalan Civil War.'
Marcoh's cookbooks… But he knew very well that Marcoh was an alchemist and a doctor, not a cook.
Which meant that Trigham's book was in code as well.
And Hughes was grinning.
'You could've just said it straight,' Roy sighed.
'Now where would the fun in that be?' Hughes asked. 'In any case, I can't crack the good alchemic codes. You need… your team, funnily enough. Get back to Eastern Command and show them to Ed. He'll have a field day – and wonder why he never found them in the first place.'
'Probably because he never went to Xenotime,' Roy sighed. 'Who even knows what'll come out of it.'
'Could be nothing,' Hughes agreed, 'but in any case, that's alchemic research. The Elrics will soak it all up like a sponge. And in the meantime…' He turned back to Sheshka. 'Let's have you start writing up the rest of the library. First up we need the court martial reports from 1901…'
Well, it looked like Hughes found exactly what he needed, after all.
Who knew there were people like that in the world.
.
They headed back to Eastern Command with the papers. They poured over them on the train as well and came up with a few possibilities – but nothing really going anywhere. Tringham was a clever fellow, hiding his research the way he had. But part of their role was to crack such codes as well and they'd manage it.
He just hoped it was worth the effort, in the end.
And once the results were lain bare – two weeks later on Fullmetal's desk with Fullmetal himself being the main reason they'd jumped the hurdle – Roy wasn't sure if it was worth the effort or not.
It was about Xerxes. All about Xerxes and the Philosopher's Stone and something hidden underground. And the tale of Xerxes he already knew.
Xerxes were the ruins in which Roy had met Fullmetal's father…
Which reminded him. 'Fullmetal?'
Fullmetal was still frowning over their final product. 'What?' he asked.
'Your father passed along a message for you.'
His head jerked up. 'What?' he hissed. 'Where did you find that bastard?'
'Xerxes,' Roy admitted. 'That's how I recalled. I'd almost forgotten.'
'So that's it.' Fullmetal frowned further. 'And I'm assuming he gave you a history lesson as well. You don't seem as surprised as these guys?' He jerked a thumb towards the rest of the team.
'He did,' Roy nodded. 'He said he was impressed with you.'
Fullmetal snorted. 'He's over ten years too late for that.'
'And there's a package.' Roy scrambled in his bag for it. 'Here.'
Fullmetal simply stared at it, as though he wasn't sure what to do. But finally, deliberately, he put it aside unopened and turned back to the pages they'd scattered about his desk. 'Ten years too late,' he repeated quietly. 'Or eleven now. I haven't even bothered counting properly.' He shook his head. 'It's the bit about blood running underground that I'm confused about.'
'You don't think it's the red water spring?' Roy asked. 'It was making the residents of the town sick.'
'Energy that needed to be burned,' Fullmetal explained. 'It's hardly surprising.'
Roy was surprised, in all honesty, to see Fullmetal describe a man's despair as "hardly surprising".
'But a horrible weight when you've overlooked it until it bears down on your shoulders.'
And Roy looks Fullmetal in the eye and saw he wasn't as dismissing as his first words had sounded at all.
'But no, it's not the spring. Otherwise every small town or even every place in the country would be like Xenotime. He's talking about something Nationwide.'
