Her stomach somersaulted as a tall, hooded figure strode inside, his emerald-green cloak billowing around his heels. He crossed to the window and flicked the curtains open, then stood gazing out across the library’s towers.
“What’s happening?” Katrien breathed below her shoulder. “I can’t see anything from down here.”
Elisabeth’s perspective consisted of a horizontal slice above the books’ spines. She couldn’t see much, either. Slowly, carefully, she inched sideways for a better angle. The tip of the magister’s pale nose came into view. He had taken down his hood. His hair was pitch-black and wavy, longer than the men wore it in Summershall, shot through at the left temple with a vivid streak of silver. Another inch to the side, and . . .
He’s hardly any older than we are, she thought in surprise. Both the silver streak and his title had prepared her for someone far older. Perhaps his appearance was deceiving. He might maintain the semblance of youth by bathing in the blood of virgins—she had once read something to that effect in a novel.
For Katrien’s benefit, she gave a slight shake of her head. His hair was too thick for her to tell whether or not he had pointed ears. If he had hooves, the hem of his cloak concealed them.
She followed up the signal with another, more urgent shake of her head. The magister had turned in their direction, his gaze fixed on the shelves. His gray eyes were extraordinarily light in color, like quartz, and the look in them as they scanned the grimoires turned her blood to ice. She had never seen eyes so cruel.
She didn’t share Katrien’s confidence that if he found them, he wouldn’t hurt them. She had grown up on tales of sorcery: armies raised from mass graves to fight on the behalf of kings, innocents sacrificed in gory rituals, children flayed as offerings to demons. And now she had been to the vault, and seen for herself the work of a sorcerer’s hands.
As the magister drew nearer, Elisabeth found to her horror that she couldn’t move. A grimoire had seized her robes between its pages. It growled around the mouthful of fabric, tugging like an angry terrier. The sorcerer’s eyes narrowed, searching for the source of the noise. Desperately, she grabbed her robes and yanked, only for the grimoire to release it at the exact same time, throwing her against the shelves—
And the bookcase collapsed, taking her with it.
THREE
ELISABETH’S EARS RANG. She choked in a cloud of dust. When her vision cleared, the magister was standing over her. “What’s this?” he asked.
Her fearful cry emerged as a croak. She flung herself away from him, scrambling amid the pile of books and broken shelving. Half-blind with terror, it took her longer than it should have to realize that she felt fine, with the exception of several highly unmagical splinters. He hadn’t cast a spell on her. Her scrabbling slowed, then stilled. She looked over her shoulder.
And froze.
The sorcerer had sunk down onto one knee and clasped his hands atop the other. Firelight played across his pale, angular features. She tried to avert her eyes, but couldn’t. As her heart threw itself against her ribs, she wondered whether he was using magic to lock her gaze in place, or whether she was simply too terrified to look away. His every feature projected villainy, from his dark, arching eyebrows to the sardonic twist of his mouth.
“Are you hurt?” he asked at last.
She said nothing.
“Can’t you speak?”
If she didn’t answer, he might hurt her to provoke a reaction. Trying her best, she managed another croaking sound. Amusement glittered in his eyes.
“I was warned I’d see some strange things in the countryside,” he said, “but I admit, I didn’t expect to find a feral librarian roaming the stacks.”
Elisabeth possessed only the vaguest notion of what she must look like, aside from the parts of herself that she could see. Ink stained her fingernails, and dust streaked her robes. She couldn’t remember the last time she had remembered to brush her hair, which stuck out in tangled chestnut-brown wisps. Her spirits lifted a cautious fraction. If she were dirty and homely enough, he might not find her worth his time or his magic.
“I didn’t expect you to find me, either,” she heard herself say. Then, horrified, she clapped a hand over her mouth.
“So you can speak. You’d just rather not speak to me?” He lifted an eyebrow when she nodded. “A wise precaution. We sorcerers are terribly wicked, after all. Prowling the wilds, stealing away maidens for our unholy rituals . . .”
Elisabeth didn’t have time to react, because just then, a knock came on the door. “Everything all right in there, Magister? We heard a crash.”
That deep, gravelly voice belonged to Warden Finch. Elisabeth reared back in alarm, protectively gripping her wrists. When Finch discovered her out of bounds—out of bounds and speaking to a magister—he wouldn’t bother with the switch; he would cane her within an inch of her life. The welts would last for days.
The magister’s gaze lingered on her for a moment, appraisingly, before he turned toward the door. “Perfectly all right,” he replied. “I’d prefer not to be disturbed until the Director’s ready to take me to the vault, if you don’t mind. Sorcerer’s business. Very private.”
“Yes, Magister.” Finch’s reply sounded grudging, but his footsteps moved away from the door.
Too late, Elisabeth’s foolishness sank in. She should have called out to Finch. She could think of several reasons why the magister might want to be alone with her in private, and a caning paled in comparison.
“Now,” he said, turning back to her. “I suppose I should clean up this mess before someone blames it on me, which means you have to move.” He unclasped his hands from his knee and offered her one. His fingers were long and slender, like a musician’s.
She stared at them as though he had aimed a dagger at her chest.
“Go on,” he said, growing impatient. “I’m not going to turn you into a salamander.”
“You can do that?” she whispered. “Truly?”
“Of course.” A wicked gleam entered his eyes. “But I only turn girls into salamanders on Tuesdays. Luckily for you, it’s a Wednesday, which is the day I drink a goblet of orphan’s blood for supper.”
He looked entirely serious. He didn’t seem to have noticed her robes, which labeled her an apprentice, and therefore an orphan by default.
Determined to distract him, she took his hand. She hadn’t forgotten her mission for Katrien. When he pulled her up, she pretended to stumble, and landed with her fingers buried in his black-and-silver hair. He blinked at her in surprise. He was almost as tall as her, and their faces nearly touched. His lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came out.
Her breath quickened. With that startled expression on his face, he looked less like a sorcerer who bargained with demons and more like an ordinary young man. His hair was soft, the texture of silk. She didn’t know why she would notice such a thing. Hastily, she snatched her hands from him and backed away.
To her dismay, he grinned. “Don’t worry,” he assured her, smoothing his tousled hair. “Young ladies have seized me in far more compromising locations. I understand the impulse can be overpowering.”
Without waiting for her reaction, he turned to study the wreckage. After a moment of consideration, he raised his hand and spoke a string of words that left her ears buzzing and her head turned inside-out. Dazed, she realized that he was speaking Enochian. It was unlike any language she had heard before. She felt as though she should recognize the words, but the moment she tried to repeat them to herself, the syllables trickled from her mind, leaving only a raw, resounding silence, like the air after a deafening clap of thunder.
Her hearing returned with a susurrus of rustling paper. The pile of spilled grimoires had begun to stir. One by one, they lifted into the air, floating in front of the sorcerer’s extended hand amid swirls of emerald light. They spun and flipped and shuffled, sorting themselves back into alphabetical order while behind them, the fallen bookcase righted itself with a labored creak. The bro
ken shelves fused, whole again; the grimoires flew back to their original positions, a few reluctant stragglers switching places at the last second.
Magic, she thought. That is what magic looks like. And then, before she could stop herself, It’s beautiful.
She would never dare give voice to such a thought aloud. The sentiment verged on betraying her oaths to the Great Library. But a part of her rebelled against the idea that in order to be a good apprentice, she should close her eyes and pretend she hadn’t seen. How could a warden defend against something they didn’t understand? Surely it was better to face evil than cower from its presence, learning nothing.
Emerald sparks still danced across the tidied shelves. She stepped forward to touch the grimoires, and felt the magic skate across her skin, bright and tingling, as though she’d plunged her hands into a bucket of champagne. Surprisingly, the sensation wasn’t painful. Nothing happened to her body—her hands didn’t change color, or shrivel like a prune.
When she looked up, however, the sorcerer was staring at her as though she’d grown a second head. Clearly, he had expected her to be afraid.
“Where is the smell?” she asked, emboldened.
He appeared momentarily at a loss. “The what?”
“That smell—the one like burnt metal. That’s sorcery, isn’t it?”
“Ah.” A line appeared between his dark brows. Perhaps she had overstepped. But then he went on, “Not exactly. It accompanies sorcery sometimes, if the spell is powerful enough. Technically it isn’t the smell of magic, but a reaction when the substance of the Otherworld—that is, the demon realm—comes into contact with ours—”
“Like a chemical reaction?” Elisabeth asked.
He was looking at her even more strangely now. “Yes, precisely.”
“Is there a name for it?”
“We call it aetherial combustion. But how did you—?”
He broke off as another knock came on the door. “We’re ready for you, Magister Thorn,” said the Director outside.
“Yes,” he replied. “Yes, I—one moment.”
He glanced back at Elisabeth, as though he half expected her to have vanished like a mirage the instant he turned away. His pale eyes bored into her. For a moment, it seemed he might do something more. Utter a parting word, or conjure a spell to punish her for her insolence. She squared her shoulders, bracing for the worst.
Then a shadow crossed his face, and his eyes shuttered. He pivoted on his heel and started for the door without speaking. A final reminder that he was a magister and she a lowly apprentice librarian, wholly beneath his notice.
She slipped back behind the shelves, breathless. A hand darted out and gripped hers.
“Elisabeth, you’re absolutely mad!” Katrien hissed, materializing from the darkness. “I can’t believe you touched him. I was poised to jump out and bludgeon him with a grimoire the entire time. Well? What’s the report?”
Her nerves sang with exhilaration. She smiled, and then for some reason began to laugh. “No pointed ears,” she gasped. “They’re completely normal.”
The reading room’s door creaked open. Katrien clamped a hand over Elisabeth’s mouth to smother her laughter. And not a moment too soon—the Director was waiting outside. She appeared as stern as always, her tumble of red hair gleaming like molten copper against the dark blue of her uniform. She glanced back into the room, and paused; after a moment of searching, her gaze unerringly found and held Elisabeth’s through the shelves. Elisabeth went rigid, but the Director said nothing. One corner of her mouth twitched, tugging at the scar on her cheek. Then the door clicked shut, and she and the magister were gone.
FOUR
THE MAGISTER’S VISIT marked the last exciting event of the season. Summer arrived in an onslaught of scorching heat. Soon afterward, an epidemic of Brittle-Spine left everyone exhausted and miserable, forced to massage the afflicted grimoires with foul-smelling ointment for weeks on end. Elisabeth was assigned to care for a Class Two called The Decrees of Bartholomew Trout, which developed a habit of wiggling provocatively every time it saw her coming. By the time the first autumn storm blew over Summershall, she never wanted to see another pot of ointment again. She was ready to collapse into bed and sleep for years.
Instead, she jolted awake in the dead of night, convinced she had heard a sound. Wind lashed the trees outside, howling through the eaves. Twigs pelted against the window in staccato bursts. The storm was loud, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had woken for a different reason. She sat up in bed and threw off her quilt.
“Katrien?” she whispered.
Katrien rolled over, muttering in the throes of a dream. She didn’t rouse even when Elisabeth reached across the space between their beds and shook her shoulder. “Blackmail him,” she mumbled against her pillow, still dreaming.
Frowning, Elisabeth slipped out of bed. She lit a candle on the nightstand and glanced around, searching for anything amiss.
The room she shared with Katrien was located high in one of the library’s towers. It was small and circular, with a narrow, castle-like window that let in drafts whenever the wind blew from the east. Everything looked exactly as it had when Elisabeth had gone to bed. Books lay open on the dresser and slumped in piles along the curved stone walls, and notes belonging to Katrien’s latest experiment littered the rug. Elisabeth took care not to step on them as she crossed to the door and drifted into the hall, her candle enfolding her in a hazy glow. The library’s thick walls deadened the wind’s howling to a faraway murmur.
Barefoot, dressed in only her nightgown, she drifted down the stairs like a ghost. A few turns brought her to a forbidding oak door reinforced with strips of iron. This door separated the library from the living quarters, and it always remained locked. Prior to the age of thirteen, she hadn’t been able to unlock it herself; she’d had to wait for a librarian to come past and usher her through. Now she possessed a greatkey, capable of unlocking the outer doors of any Great Library in the kingdom. She wore it around her neck at all times, even when sleeping or bathing, a tangible symbol of her oaths.
She lifted the key, then paused, running her fingertips across the door’s rough surface. A memory flashed before her: the claw marks on the table in the vault, which had scored the wood as though it were butter.
No—that was impossible. Grimoires only transformed into Maleficts if damaged. It was not something that would happen in the middle of the night, with no visitors and all the grimoires safely contained. Not with wardens patrolling the darkened halls, and the Great Library’s colossal warning bell hanging undisturbed above their heads.
Resolving to banish her childish fears, she slipped through the door and locked it again behind her. The atrium’s lamps had been dimmed for the night. Their light glimmered off the gilt letters on books’ spines, reflected from the brass rails that connected the wheeled ladders to the tops of the shelves. Straining her ears, she detected nothing out of the ordinary. Thousands of grimoires slumbered peacefully around her, velvet ribbons fluttering from their pages as they snored. In a glass case nearby, a Class Four named Lord Fustian’s Florilegium cleared its throat self-importantly, trying to get her attention. It needed to be complimented out loud at least once per day, or it would snap shut like a clam and refuse to open again for years.
She stole forward, holding her candle higher. Nothing’s wrong. Time to go back to bed.
That was when it struck her—an eye-watering, unmistakable smell. The last few months fell away, and for a moment she stood in the reading room again, bending over the leather armchair. Her heart skipped a beat, then began pounding in her ears.
Aetherial combustion. Someone had performed sorcery in the library.
Quickly, she snuffed out her candle. A banging sound made her flinch. She waited until it happened again, quieter this time, almost like an echo. Now suspecting what it was, she snuck around a bookcase until the library’s front doors came into view. They had been left open and were blowing in
the wind.
Where were the wardens? She should have seen someone by now, but the library seemed completely empty. Chill with dread, she made her way toward the doors. Though every shadow now possessed an ominous quality, stretching across the floorboards like fingers, she skirted around the shafts of moonlight, not wanting to be seen.
Pain exploded through her bare toe halfway across the atrium. She had stubbed it on something on the floor. Something cold and hard—something that shone in the dark—
A sword. And not just any sword—Demonslayer. Garnets glittered on its pommel in the gloom.
Numbly, Elisabeth picked it up. Touching it felt wrong. Demonslayer never left the Director’s belt. She would only allow it out of her sight if . . .
With a stifled cry, Elisabeth rushed to the shape that lay slumped on the floor nearby. Red hair feathered by moonlight, a pale hand outflung. She gripped the shoulder and found it unresisting as she turned the body over. The Director’s eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
The floor yawned open beneath Elisabeth; the library spun in a dizzy whirl. This wasn’t possible. It was a bad dream. Any moment now she would wake up in her bed, and everything would be back to normal. As she waited for this to happen, the seconds unspooling past, her stomach heaved. She stumbled away from the Director’s body toward the doors, where she coughed up a sour string of bile. When she put out her hand to steady herself, her palm slipped against the door frame.
Blood, she thought automatically, but the substance coating her hand was something else—thicker, darker. Not blood—ink.
Elisabeth instantly knew what this meant. She wiped her hand on her nightgown and gripped Demonslayer’s pommel in both hands, shaking too violently to hold it with only one. She stepped out into the night. The wind rushed over her, tangling her hair. At first she saw nothing, only the twinkling glow of a few lamps still lit down in Summershall. Their lights flickered as the orchard’s trees thrashed in the wind. A high wrought iron fence stood around the library’s gravel yard, its sharp finials spearing the restless sky like daggers, but the gate hung open, warped on its hinges, dripping with ink.
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