Sophie rolled her eyes. She had met a number of people like Prigg: They believed that telling a child made-up things was a sort of deception—as though children were gullible half-wits who believed everything they heard.
Before she could formulate a rebuttal, a guard approached. “All done here, sir,” he said to Prigg. “The books are loaded up and ready for the Pyre.” Sophie stared at the wagon of books in the street. Furious though she was to lose these books, a part of her did not care if they burned. She had, for one brief moment, held an actual magic book. How could made-up stories compare with the real thing?
“I’ve done what you asked,” her father said. “You will now drop the charges?”
“One moment,” Prigg said. He walked between the bookcases, his ebony cane tapping the floor. “In my line of work, you find that a certain type of nonsense can push people toward corruption. Even those who understand the dangers of nonsense will often try to retain one or two volumes that hold sentimental value.” His eyes flashed to Sophie. “Children, especially, are susceptible to such weakness.” His cane stopped at the stove in the back of the shop, which was now cold. He peered at the black burn marks on the wooden floor—scars from when Sophie’s father had kicked open the door. “Fortunately, I am not so easily deterred.”
He stepped back and gestured for a guard to search the stove. Sophie watched as the burly guard knelt down and put a tentative hand into the ashes. He grunted and emerged a moment later clutching a charred book in his hands. It had a blue cover and a heavy metal clasp.
“The Book of Who . . .” Sophie said.
Its cover was slightly burned, but it looked otherwise unharmed.
“I—I—I destroyed it,” her father said. “This is impossible.”
Prigg took The Book of Who between his thumb and forefinger. “Nonsense is what it is. And I will not stand for it!” There was a glint of hungry triumph in his eye. His hand shook slightly as he unlatched the clasp and opened the cover.
“Give it back!” Sophie cried, rushing toward him.
The guard behind her reached out and grabbed her by an arm. “Mind your tongue, lass,” he growled, twisting her arm until she cried out. “Or you’ll be singin’ that song from the inside of a prison cell.”
“You can’t just take the book!” she yelled, ignoring the pain in her arm. “It doesn’t belong to you!”
Prigg peered down at her. “And who, exactly, is going to stop me?” The man was doubtless posing a rhetorical question. However, he had asked who, and the book was compelled to reply. No sooner had he uttered his question than the book came alive. Its pages flipped with blinding speed—spraying bits of ash into the air. Inquisitor Prigg coughed, caught off guard by the sudden cloud of soot.
The book slipped from his grip and hit the floor with a heavy whump, its pages still turning. Sophie and her father and the guards crowded around the open book, which had come to rest on an entry in the middle of the volume. The spine breathed up and down, panting from the effort. Shining in blue ink was an entry Sophie had seen the night before:
SOPHIE QUIRE: Daughter of Coriander Quire. The Bookmender of Bustleburgh. The Last Storyguard.
The guard had released her arm, and Sophie stepped away from him, her eyes fixed on the words. She was the Storyguard, and it was her job to protect this book. She had failed before, but the book, it seemed, was offering her another chance.
“Sophie?” her father whispered. “Why is your name in this book?”
Sophie looked from her father to the Inquisitor to the guards—they were all staring at her, awaiting an explanation. “Because . . .” She swallowed. “Because I am the last Storyguard, daughter of Coriander Quire, keeper of stories, protector of the Four Questions.” She did not fully understand the words she was saying, but some part of her knew they were true. The book did not belong to Prigg or to her mother or to Peter Nimble or even to the Professor. The book belonged to her. The book needed her.
Inquisitor Prigg had by this time regained his composure. His look of surprise had been replaced by a satisfied sneer. “Very well, Storyguard.” The word was dripping with contempt. “In light of this deception, I see no choice but to reinstate the previous charges—along with an additional charge of conspiracy.” He nodded to the guards. “Arrest her.”
The two guards lowered their muskets and approached Sophie. Their weapons were nearly as long as she was tall.
“No . . .” She backed up, clutching her father’s side. “No, you can’t do this.”
Sophie’s father was staring at the open book, which still lay on the floor. He looked up toward the approaching guards, his fists balled. “Sophie,” he said. His voice sounded tight. “Run.”
The guards rushed to seize her, but Augustus Quire, bookseller, leapt in front of them—pushing them both back against the wall. “Run!” he cried as the guards attacked him with the butt ends of their muskets.
Before she could question him, before she could question herself, she snatched the book from the ground. She scrambled to her feet and raced toward the open front door, The Book of Who clasped tightly against her chest.
“Ignore the man!” Prigg cried. “Get the girl!”
The guards let go of her father and ran after her.
The front door was blocked by the wagon, which was loaded high with books. Sophie clambered into the wagon and scrambled up and over the bed, books spilling out behind her.
“Stop her!”
The wagon shuddered beneath her as the guards crashed into the side. Sophie dropped to the street on the far side of the wagon and disappeared down the alley—the Inquisitor’s cries echoing behind her.
CHAPTER NINE
THE RUNAWAY and the ROGUE
Sophie had little trouble evading Prigg’s guards as they pursued her through the streets. Even when more guards joined the chase—all waving muskets and shouting, “Halt!”—they were no match for a girl who had spent her entire life in the twisting alleys of Olde Town. She ran down forgotten staircases and across crumbling walkways, The Book of Who weighing heavily in her arms. By the time she slipped into the entrance to the city crypts, the shouts had receded completely, and she knew she was safe.
Sophie snuck through the underground catacombs, her path lit only by the occasional mounted torch. She soon found herself before a modest crypt with an iron door. A single word was etched into the stone above the lintel: Quire.
This was Sophie’s family crypt, and it was the place she always went when she most missed her mother. Sophie had never been inside the crypt, which was sealed tight. Still, just being this close to her mother’s body gave her a feeling of not being alone.
She huddled against the iron door, her heart aching with equal parts exhaustion and exhilaration. She had done it. She had saved The Book of Who—the very book her mother had died to protect.
Sophie looked closely at the book, whose pages seemed completely undamaged from the stove. She ran her thumb over the worn leather cover. “I hope you were worth it,” she said. She closed her eyes, recalling the image of her father fighting two armed guards with his bare hands. The sight made her at once terrified and proud. As soon as it was safe, she would go back to him, and then they could escape from Bustleburgh together.
In the meantime, she had other concerns. She had read many exciting stories about fugitives and runaways, and something that had always annoyed her was how little attention was paid to sensible preparations. How many times had she read about—and scorned—heroines who fled their persecutors in bare feet? And yet here she was, huddled against a crypt door in the freezing cold, wearing only a light dress and no stockings. Already the sun had begun to set. She did not relish how much colder it would be down here once night came. She needed a safe place to hide.
But first she needed to ask the one question that had been haunting her ever since her father spoke to her in the attic. She held out the book. “Who stabbed my mother?” she asked.
The cover opened, and pages fl
ipped quickly. When the book stopped, however, it was on a place in the back of the volume where the paper had been torn from the spine. Sophie ran her fingers along the jagged edge of paper that remained. “The entry,” she said. “It’s been ripped out.”
She wondered whether it was her mother who had done this or perhaps someone else. But why? The book clearly had known the answer to her question, but it had been rendered silent. She needed to know more about this book and what it could do. Maybe that would lead her to her mother’s killer. “Who in Bustleburgh knows what to do with The Book of Who?”
The book’s pages turned quickly. They settled on an entry with an unfamiliar name:
EZMERZELDA la POMME: Potion maker and shopkeeper, currently operating an oubliette on the eastern edge of Bustleburgh. Mistress of Taro, the Mandrake. Known aliases: Lady Korrigan, Miss Gossamer, Madame Eldritch.
~For more information, see Book of Where, “Oubliette”; Book of What, “Mandrake”; Book of Who, “Taro”
Sophie smiled, staring at the list of aliases. She knew Madame Eldritch. More important, she knew where to find her. She tucked the book under one arm and stood. With a final glance at her mother’s resting place, she set out toward the streets.
At the same moment Sophie was traveling away from the bookshop, someone else was traveling toward it. Peter Nimble and his friend Sir Tode had spent an anxious day hiding among the rooftops of Bustleburgh, doing their best to stay clear of notice.
In a moment of impulsiveness, Peter had decided to trust Sophie with repairing the Professor’s very valuable (and undoubtedly fragile) book. That he and Sir Tode had mistakenly tracked down the wrong person was clear enough from their conversation with Sophie the night before. In the sober light of day, he realized that perhaps it would have been wiser to accept the girl’s refusal and continue their search for the real bookmender, which was what Professor Cake had charged them to do. But something inside Peter—what he used to refer to as his thief’s instinct—had told him that this girl possessed more than she presented to the world, and that the book, in some strange way, belonged in her hands. (Sir Tode had his own opinions about why Peter had trusted the girl, and it had less to do with any “thieving” instinct than it did with his “twelve-year-old boy” instinct.)
Whatever the reason, it was now completely apparent to Peter as he and Sir Tode returned to Quire & Quire Booksellers that he had made a horrible mistake. The door was wide open. The shelves were completely empty. A breeze stirred a pile of ashes across the wooden floor.
“Good heavens,” Sir Tode said, his ears twitching. “They appear to have been robbed.”
Peter ran his fingers along one of the empty shelves. “Not robbed—it’s too orderly.” He could smell cold ashes near the stove in the back of the shop. He knelt down to study the floor with his hand. He could feel bare footprints in the ashes. “Look at these tracks—this is her, running toward the door.”
“Without her shoes?” Sir Tode turned to look outside. “Why would she do that?”
“Who cares why?” Peter said, standing. “Hello? Is anyone here?” He rushed to the small room in the back. He pulled open the drawers of Sophie’s workbench, letting tools spill out at his feet. “It has to be here.” He stormed through the rest of the shop, checking every shelf, every corner, every nook and cranny.
“The girl’s not here,” Sir Tode said. “And neither is the book.”
Peter punched his blade into the countertop—cutting deeply into the wood. His whole body felt shaky, as if he were going to faint. The Professor had trusted Peter, and Peter had failed him. “How could I be so stupid?”
At that moment, Peter heard a creaking floorboard behind him. Instinct took over, and he spun around, his weapon poised. “Don’t move!”
A man stood at the bottom of the stairs. “The shop is closed, sir,” he said in a flat tone. “We are restocking our inventory. Could you please lower your weapon?”
Peter kept his blade where it was. “There was a girl working here last night,” he said. “Medium height, a bit of a know-it-all. I brought her a book to repair.”
“You brought her . . . ?” The man’s voice faltered.
Before Peter could react, the man charged at him and grabbed him by the lapels. “YOU!” He lifted Peter clear off the floor and slammed him against an empty shelf. “It was YOU!”
“W-w-what are you doing?” Peter sputtered.
“Now see here!” Sir Tode shouted. “Unhand him!” He head-butted the man’s shin, but the man did not let go.
The man leaned close to Peter—so close that Peter could hear the blood pulsing through the vein in the man’s forehead. He spoke through clenched teeth. “You stole my daughter.”
“We didn’t steal anyone,” Peter said, trying to breathe. “We’re just trying to get our book back. If you can just tell us where she went or what—”
“Don’t ever talk to me of that book again.” The man dragged a flailing Peter across the shop and to the door, which he flung open with one hand. “GET OUT!” He shoved Peter through the open door and then took a kick at Sir Tode, who only barely avoided getting struck. “Leave my family alone.”
Peter pulled himself up and ran toward the man. “Please, sir! We’re only trying to—!”
Slam.
A moment later, he heard the lock click shut. Locks, of course, were no obstacle to Peter Nimble, but he understood well enough that this man would be of no future help.
“Oh, well,” Sir Tode said, clopping to his side. “The good news is we know who has the book. The bad news is that it seems she’s run off. What do you suppose we do now?”
Peter raised his head and smelled the air. He detected the faint odor of cold ash on cobblestone weaving a hurried path through the city. “Now we find her.”
CHAPTER TEN
MADAME ELDRITCH’S OUBLIETTE
It was nearly dark by the time Sophie reached the pier that ran along the bank of the Wassail. The light from the moon reflected off the river as it flowed into the Grimmwald. When Sophie was young, this pier had been used by an endless parade of colorful ships from various foreign lands. Now it was empty.
Two sentries were pacing along the edge of the river, long muskets propped against their shoulders. Sophie waited until they had turned away from her and then snuck onto the pier, The Book of Who tucked snugly under one arm. She climbed down a creaking wooden ladder that led to the lower docks. A few derelict ships and rowboats were moored to the posts, bobbing on the surface of the water. In the moonlight, she could just make out a series of platforms and rope-bridges that led to a stone tower hidden beneath the pier. Sophie followed the path, careful not to let her bare feet slip on the slick wood.
She soon reached the tower, which rose from the water like a decaying tusk—the last remaining pillar of a fortress that had been destroyed long ago. There was a round wooden door in the face of the tower with a single word etched above it: OUBLIETTE.
Sophie pushed the door open and stepped inside. She found herself standing in a circular room lit with flickering amber candles, their glow diffused by a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke.
The oubliette was a forgetting room, where men and women with difficult lives took strange tobaccos and stranger teas in the hope that they might forget their pain, if only for a few hours. Forgetting rooms were dangerous places, and it was a wonder to her that Inquisitor Prigg had not shut this one down. It was said that many customers awoke to discover that they had been robbed of their possessions, and that others did not wake at all.
The air was thick with smoke, and Sophie had to cover her mouth with a sleeve of her dress to keep from coughing. She peered around the room, her eyes adjusting to the diffuse light. Men and a few women lay on soft pillows clutching hookahs and bottles, their eyes half-open but glazed over.
An old woman stirred beside Sophie, making her jump. “Child!” she said, her eyes dull, her hand grasping. “Are you from the fairy court? Has my changeling boy been release
d? His name is Anton. He was so small . . .” Her lids grew heavy, and she slumped to one side.
Sophie picked her way past the woman and approached the back of the room. Through the haze, she noticed a small man, only slightly larger than herself, wearing a hooded cloak that completely covered his head. Sophie recognized him as Madame Eldritch’s manservant, Mister Taro. Taro had occasionally joined his mistress on her errands to the bookshop. In all her years, Sophie had never once seen his face or heard him speak. He was now seated on the floor, his legs crossed, playing some sort of sitar. It was a hollow, almost aimless tune, like a lullaby gone wrong.
Sophie cleared her throat. “I . . . I’m here to see Madame Eldritch,” she whispered.
Mister Taro did not stop playing but nodded to a trapdoor in the floor beside him. Sophie knelt down and opened the door herself. She half expected to find some sort of shadowy dungeon below, but instead greenish light flooded up from a curving staircase made of intricately laced wrought iron.
Sophie clutched The Book of Who to her chest and crept down the stairs. She found herself standing in a room hung with tapestries. The air was warm and delicious. The smoke, which had been so oppressive upstairs, mixed here with the scent of wet stone to create a delicate perfume. Cabinets and shelves lined the walls, each one filled with a variety of bizarre objects whose only unifying element was their unusualness. Vials of shimmering liquid. Plants made of stone. A chess set made from animal bones. A sword with three blades. A toad on a chain. And a few old books that Sophie recognized all too well. There was a sign hanging from the wall that read ALL CHARMS GUARANTEED.
This was the real oubliette: a secret shop that specialized in artifacts both rare and dangerous—nonsense of the highest order. She could only imagine what sort of customers usually found themselves down here—surely not twelve-year-old girls.
Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard Page 6