A knock heralded Hannah’s return with a tray of tea and iced cakes. Elisabeth made a show of nibbling on them, even though she could barely force their sweetness down. Her stomach lurched when the door clicked open again. This time, it wasn’t Hannah. She had only a few seconds of warning before Lorelei’s glamour wrapped around her like a warm, smothering blanket. Then Ashcroft leaned forward, folding his hands in front of his knees.
Every day, this was how the interrogation began.
“Now, Miss Scrivener,” he said, “why don’t we talk about the attack on Summershall again? Let’s see if you remember any new details, shall we?”
He sounded as kind as he had a moment ago, but the good humor had drained from his expression. Elisabeth knew that she walked along a knife’s edge. One slip, and he would find out that Lorelei’s glamour wasn’t working as it should, compelling her to tell the truth. A single lapse could spell death. She strove to keep her expression blank and her voice wooden, grateful for the glamour’s numbing influence. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to sit and face Ashcroft calmly. More importantly, she wouldn’t be able to lie.
“Can you tell me why you woke up that night?” Ashcroft pressed. “Did you hear something? Sense something?”
He had already asked her that question many times. She took care to keep her answer the same. “A storm blew in. The wind was loud—it blew branches against my window.”
He frowned, dissatisfied. “And when you got out of bed, did you feel any differently than normal?”
He wanted to know how she had evaded his sleeping spell. But even Elisabeth didn’t have an answer to that question. Mechanically, she shook her head.
Ashcroft’s jaw tightened. It was the first indication that his patience had limits, a reaction that left her ill. She didn’t want to witness what he was capable of when he lost his temper.
A sound came from Lorelei in the corner, where she was applying rosin to the bow of a violin. Today she wore a crimson gown that matched her lips and eyes. It was so long that it spilled off the chair like a waterfall and formed a shimmering pool on the carpet, as though she sat in a puddle of blood. “The girl is hiding something from you, master,” she said.
Ashcroft looked around. “Are you certain? Is that possible?”
The hair stood up on the back of Elisabeth’s neck. She forced herself not to react, aware that she could betray herself with any movement.
“If she has a secret, the impulse to protect it may remain, even through a glamour. Most humans haven’t the fortitude. But this girl is strong-willed. Her spirit burns as brightly as a flame.” Lorelei glanced at Elisabeth beneath her eyelashes, a gesture so like Silas that goose bumps spread across her arms. “I do so wish I could taste it.”
Ashcroft leaned back, steepling his fingers. “What do you propose I do?”
“Enter her mind. Take the memory from her by force, and destroy the rest.”
“It’s too early for that. She must be seen for a few more days before I get rid of her. If news of her fate reaches the papers, I will need witnesses to support the physician’s diagnosis.”
Lorelei gave a delicate shrug. “Very well, master. And you’re certain her presence here isn’t distracting you from your work?”
Ashcroft glanced at his desk, at the grimoire hidden beneath his cloak. Based on the way it had levitated that first night in the study, Elisabeth guessed it was a Class Five, or even a Class Six. Private ownership of grimoires Class Four and up had been made illegal by the Reforms. If Ashcroft was willing to keep something that dangerous in his home, the book had to be important.
He sagged back in his armchair, shadows etching deep lines across his face. “It’s proving stubborn,” he said, “but I’ll have what I need before Harrows.”
Elisabeth’s pulse quickened. The Great Library of Harrows was located in the northeast corner of Austermeer, where the Blackwald met the mountains—the most remote possible location to store high-security grimoires. Descriptions she had read of the place painted it as a fortress built of black stone from the bones of the Elkenspine Mountains. Its unbreachable vault contained two of the kingdom’s three Class Ten grimoires. Did he aim to attack it, like Summershall and Knockfeld?
Whatever his plans, the grimoire on his desk clearly played some essential role. And no matter the risk, she had to find out what it was.
• • •
Her chance arrived two days later, when Mr. Hob appeared in the doorway in the middle of her questioning. “A visitor,” he announced in his deep, garbled voice. “Lord Kicklighter here to see you.”
“With no word ahead?” Ashcroft’s expression darkened. “I’ll meet him in the salon. Lorelei, watch over Elisabeth.” He strode from the room, and a moment later Lord Kicklighter’s greeting boomed down the hall.
Elisabeth’s mind raced. Judging by the length of Kicklighter’s handshake the other night, Ashcroft was going to be occupied for at least a few minutes. She felt Lorelei’s bored gaze tickling over her. All she needed was to get the demon to leave the study for a few seconds. But she had nothing to work with. If only she were closer to the bookcases, she was certain she could manage to knock one over.
A decorative mirror on the wall afforded her a view of herself sitting on the couch. She looked drawn and pale, at odds with the extravagant amethyst gown Hannah had laced her into that morning. She was growing used to the way the expensive corsets squeezed her chest, but at tense moments like this, the garments still made her feel short of breath.
An idea struck her like lightning. She gasped loudly, drawing Lorelei’s attention. Her hand flew to her breast. Then she rolled her eyes up into her head and collapsed onto the carpet with a lifeless whump, landing so hard that she rattled the teacups on the coffee table.
Silence. Elisabeth felt the weight of Lorelei’s regard. Once she seemed to decide that Elisabeth wasn’t faking it, she rose with a whisper of satin and stepped over Elisabeth’s prone body on her way outside. As soon as she had gone, Elisabeth hiked up her skirts and scrambled to the desk. Bracing herself, she swept away Ashcroft’s cloak.
The grimoire lay open beneath a length of iron chain stretched along the valley of its spine, its pages filled with a slanted, spiky script. That was all she had a chance to observe before a wave of malevolence crashed against her, forcing her a step backward. A man’s voice roared wordlessly within her mind, tearing at her in a maelstrom of anguish and fury.
She didn’t have time to wonder whether she’d made a mistake. The edges of the room darkened; the grimoire’s pages whipped as if the study’s windows had been thrown open during a howling gale. She clenched her teeth and pushed against the grimoire’s will, stretching out her hand, trembling with the effort. Sweat beaded her brow. Even the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to slow, like the air had turned to treacle. At last her fingertips brushed leather, and a confused, sickening rush of emotions thrummed through her body. Longing. Rage. Betrayal. She had never felt anything like it before. She swallowed thickly, wishing she had iron gloves to dampen the grimoire’s psychic emanations.
“I’m not your enemy,” she forced out. “I’m here as a prisoner of Chancellor Ashcroft. I intend to stop him, if I can.”
At once the man’s voice fell silent, and the pressure in the air disappeared. Elisabeth fell forward, catching herself on the desk, her muscles quivering from the strain. The grimoire now lay quiescent. Her desperate guess had proved correct—its malice and fury had been meant for Ashcroft, not for her.
“What does he want from you?” she murmured. Carefully, she lifted it from the desk.
Its cover was bound in strange scaled leather, crimson in color, which reminded her unsettlingly of the imps in the conservatory. A five-pointed pentagram was emblazoned on the front. Age had faded the title, but the words remained legible: The Codex Daemonicus.
Her heart skipped a beat. She had read this grimoire’s title before, and not long ago. Where had she seen it? In Nathaniel’s coach, tr
aveling through the Blackwald . . .
I’ll have what I need before Harrows, Ashcroft had said. Whatever he needed, it sounded as though he would find it in this book. She wracked her memory, trying to recall why the Lexicon had mentioned this volume. It had been in the chapter about demons. All she could remember was that it supposedly contained the ravings of a mad sorcerer, who claimed to have hidden some kind of secret inside—
Footsteps clipped down the hall. Breathless, Elisabeth snatched Ashcroft’s cloak and yanked it back over the grimoire. Hoping that its psychic screams had been audible only to her, she scrambled across the room and threw herself back on the floor, arranging her limbs as closely to their original position as she could manage.
She wasn’t a moment too soon. A shadow fell over her just seconds later, and then an acidic smell seared her nostrils, zinging through every nerve in her body. She shot upright, strangling back a shout, only for Lorelei to catch her in an unyielding grip, a suggestion of claws pricking through the lace of her gloves. The demon held a crystal vial full of what appeared to be salt.
“There, there,” she soothed, her tone cloyingly sweet. “You’re all right. It was just smelling salts, darling. You had a little spell, but it’s over now.”
“Give her to me,” Ashcroft said. “This farce has gone on long enough. It’s time.”
Lorelei let go of her and stepped back. Before Elisabeth could react, Ashcroft seized her and spun her around. His expression was terrible to behold. It was as though he had spent all of his kindly charm putting up with Lord Kicklighter, and he had none left to maintain the act.
His patience with her had reached an end. Now, she was about to meet the monster beneath the man.
“Listen to me, girl,” he said, and shook her until her teeth rattled, “you will tell me what you know.” And then he splayed his palm over her forehead, and Elisabeth’s thoughts exploded outward like a newborn star.
The study vanished; everything went pitch black except for her and Ashcroft and sharp-edged silver fragments that hung glinting in the darkness around them. Familiar images flowed over the surfaces of the fragments in silent flashes of color and movement. They were her own memories, floating in a void like the shards of a shattered mirror. Each one showed a different scene. The Director’s red hair shining in the torchlight. Warden Finch raising his switch. Katrien’s laughing face.
Though Elisabeth still dimly felt the Chancellor’s brutal grip on her arm, in this place, he stood apart from her. He turned, taking in the fragmented memories, and then raised his hand. The shards began to spin around them in a glittering cyclone, blurring together to show him not just isolated fragments out of order, but whole memories, Elisabeth’s life flowing past on a shimmering river of glass. Distorted sounds echoed through the void: laughter, whispers, screams. Her stomach clenched as she saw herself as a little girl bounding through the orchard toward Summershall, her brown hair flying out behind her, Master Hargrove struggling to keep up. These were her memories. They were not for Ashcroft to see.
“Show me what you’ve been hiding,” the Chancellor commanded. His cruel, hollow voice rang from every direction.
The bright summer afternoon faded away, replaced by a ghostly image of Elisabeth descending the Great Library’s stairs in her nightgown, a candle raised high. She felt his magic drawing the memory out of her, a force as inexorable as the undertow of a tide, and panic squeezed her lungs. She could feel the memory, hear it, smell it. She watched as Memory-Elisabeth unlocked the door and stood gazing wide-eyed into the dark. Any second now she would notice the aetherial combustion, proof that a sorcerer had committed the crime.
Elisabeth had to stop it. But she couldn’t resist the pull of Ashcroft’s sorcery. She sensed that if she fought him, her memories would shatter into a thousand pieces, gone forever. He would destroy her mind—her very life—if he had to. She needed to show him something.
So she reached deep inside herself, where her most precious memories were hidden, and found something that she could give.
“Do you know why I chose to keep you, Elisabeth?” the Director asked.
Elisabeth’s breath caught. The memory had sped forward to the moment that she had found the Director’s body. They were the same words from the vault, but this time whispered from the Director’s dying lips, last words meant for Elisabeth alone. She had succeeded in blurring the two memories together. And it felt real, because to her it was real. Grief and longing speared her heart like an arrow. She had never expected to hear the Director’s voice again.
“It was storming, I recall.” The halting words fell from the Director’s cracked lips. “The grimoires were restless that night. . . .”
Gazing up at the memory, Ashcroft frowned.
“The Great Library had claimed you.”
Ashcroft shook his head in disgust and turned away. He gestured, and the shards began to disintegrate, crashing like a sheet of water toward the floor.
“No!” Elisabeth shouted. Too late, she remembered what Lorelei had said two days ago. Take the memory from her by force, and destroy the rest.
“You belonged here. . . .”
Reality flooded back in a tempest of color and sound. Someone was screaming. Elisabeth’s throat was raw. All of her was raw, and she tasted salt, and copper, and the world stank of singed metal.
Ashcroft’s voice coasted above her agony like a ship on a calm sea. “She knew nothing. That memory she hid from us—it was just a sentimental trifle. Important to her, perhaps, but not to us. Fetch Mr. Hob. The arrangements have been made.” His voice receded, or perhaps that was her getting farther away, tumbling down into some dark place from which there was no return. “She will be sent to Leadgate tonight.”
FIFTEEN
OUTSIDE THE COACH’S windows, the night hung in tatters. Greasy clouds cloaked the city, bleached by the full moon, which shone like a silver coin lost in a dirty gutter. Elisabeth hadn’t seen this part of Brassbridge when she and Nathaniel rode in last week, aside from a dismal smear of factory smoke on the horizon. The old brick buildings were blackened with soot, and the coach’s wheels splashed through foul-looking puddles. A clammy chill permeated the air. Somewhere nearby, a bell tolled mournfully in the dark.
She sat slumped forward, shivering uncontrollably. Disjointed thoughts filled her head like broken glass, and agony lanced through her skull every time the coach bounced over a rut in the road, whiting out her vision.
My name is Elisabeth Scrivener. I am from Summershall. Chancellor Ashcroft is my enemy. I must expose him. . . .
She recited the words over and over again in her head until they began to feel real. One by one, she pulled the jagged edges of her memories together. The spell Ashcroft had used on her should have destroyed her mind, leaving her an empty shell—but it had not succeeded. She was still herself. Even the pain only served to remind her that she was alive, and had a purpose.
A tall, serrated metal fence flashed past the window. The coach began to slow. It jostled to a halt outside a wrought iron gate, beyond which squatted the edifice of Leadgate Hospital. The hospital was a long, rectangular building with a hint of classical architecture in its pillared front and domed chapel, but these flourishes only served to emphasize the institutional bleakness of the rest. It loomed above the surrounding squalor and misery like something out of a nightmare. She knew instinctively that it was a place of suffering, not healing. A place where unwanted people, like her, were made to disappear.
Guards opened the gates to admit them, and the carriage crawled up the drive. Elisabeth pressed her face to the window. A party awaited them at the hospital’s doors: a stout, hard-faced woman in a starched pinafore, flanked by two male attendants in matching white uniforms. When the coach halted again, one of the attendants opened the door. Mist slopped inside the carriage like spilled porridge.
“Come on out, dear,” the matron coaxed. She spoke to Elisabeth as one might a small child. “Come nicely, and you’ll be given a nice,
hot supper by the fire. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Stew, and bread, and pudding with raisins—as much of it as you want. I’m Matron Leach, and I’ll be a good friend to you here.”
Elisabeth stumbled out, keeping her eyes downcast. She watched through a curtain of hair as one of the men circled around her, approaching her from behind with a bundle of leather straps and buckles. Her stomach lurched when she realized what they were: restraints, not just for her wrists, but for her ankles, too. With an effort, she forced herself not to panic. She waited until the man was almost upon her. Then she spun, teeth bared, and kneed him savagely between the legs. She felt a stab of guilt as he groaned and crumpled to the ground, but it didn’t last long; she was already off, Matron Leach shouting behind her.
She bolted across the hospital’s grounds like a deer flushed from a thicket, her long legs carrying her faster than the men could keep chase. The thin grass gave way to a poorly tended garden lined with overgrown hedges and half-dead trees. She skidded to a halt amid a slush of fallen leaves. If she kept running, she would just go in a circle around the hospital. The fence that surrounded the grounds was too tall to climb, and topped with barbed metal finials.
But the shouts behind her were drawing nearer. She had to make a decision.
Her heart pounded in the roof of her mouth as she clawed her way beneath the nearest hedge. Roots and branches scraped her hands raw, and the sickly smell of rotting blossoms filled her nostrils. She raked the leaves up behind her to provide extra cover, and snatched her arms back inside as a man’s boots pelted past, spraying dirt and leaves in her face. Inspired, she scooped up handfuls of earth and rubbed them over herself until she couldn’t tell her limbs apart from the thick roots that twisted across the ground.
Minutes crept by. Lanterns bobbed through the dark, and calls rang out at intervals. Men peered into the hedges and thrashed the vegetation with cudgels, but she remained perfectly still, even when one of the cudgels dealt a bruising blow across her shin. Gooseflesh stippled her arms as the night grew colder, but she dared not so much as shiver.
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