opened his mouth, I’d have had him murdered years ago.”
The chronicler looked the Lady of Blades up and down. “To what do I owe this visit, young ’Silla? Haven’t seen you down here for an age.”
“Did you really believe I’d not know what you two were up to in here?” she asked, closing the book’s cover. “Did you think me blind, or simply pray I’d not notice?”
“Wasn’t sure you’d be able to see all the way down here from your high chair.”
“How long have you known?” Drusilla asked.
The chronicler shook his head. “Not sure what you mean, lass.”
Drusilla drew a long, wickedly sharp stiletto from the sleeve of her robe.
“What’s that for?” Aelius asked. “Chest hair getting unruly again?”
Drusilla slammed the knife point-first into a stack of random histories and novels on Aelius’s desk. The blade punched through the leather cover of the tome atop the pile and deep into the pages beyond. The chronicler winced, saw the wounded book was none other than On Bended Knee, a particular favorite of his.*
Somewhere out in the library’s dark, a bookworm roared.
“I’d not do that again were I you, young lady,” Aelius said.
“I believe I have made my point,” Drusilla replied, withdrawing the blade.
The chronicler looked down at his hand. A hole was punched through his palm—the exact same size and shape as the wound she’d just inflicted on the book. Aelius peered at the Lady of Blades through the new hole in his hand as she rested the blade’s tip on another cover.
“I suppose you have,” the old ghost replied.
“How long have you known?” Drusilla drummed her fingers on the crow gracing the chronicle’s cover. Aelius could see she’d been leafing through the second volume, too. “About the girl. How long?”
The chronicler shrugged. “Since a little before she arrived here.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“So suddenly keen for my counsel, are we?” Aelius scoffed. “You haven’t set foot in this place for a fucking decade.”
“I am the Lady of Blades, the Red Church is—”
“Don’t you fucking dare lecture me on what this place is and isn’t,” Aelius spat. “I know it better than any of you.”
“I am not diminishing your contribution, Chronicler, but times have—”
“Contribution?” Aelius crowed. “I started this fucking place!”
“But times have changed!” Drusilla finished, rising to her feet. “You may have carved this church out of nothing, aye. But that was centuries past, Aelius. Millennia ago. The world you knew is dust, and for all your service to the Maw, she saw fit to drag you back from your place at Hearth centuries after you were dead, and for what? To make you her general? Her undying Lord of Blades to lead her flock to new and greater heights? No!” Drusilla shoved aside the stack of books on his desk, sent them spilling across the floor. “She made you her damned librarian.”
Out in the dark, a bookworm roared again. Closer this time. Aelius drew long and deep on his cigarillo, embers sparking in his eyes, his fingers stained with ink.
“Don’t fuck with librarians, young lady. We know the power of words.”
“Spare me,” Drusilla said. “Where is the third one?”
“Third what?”
“The third volume!” Drusilla said, slamming her palm down on the first two chronicles in time with her words. “Birth! Life! Where is Death?”
“Waiting for you right outside in those shelves, you keep kicking these books around.”
“Where?” Drusilla snarled.
The chronicler tilted his head back, breathed gray into the air. “Dunno. Never looked for it. Things don’t get found in this place unless they’re supposed to be.”
“That, good Chronicler, is but the latest in a series of foolish assumptions.”
Drusilla snatched up the two Nevernight Chronicles and stalked past him, her blue eyes flashing with anger and impatience. He caught the scent of roses in her long gray hair, and underneath, the faint aroma of tea and death. Walking to the mighty Athenaeum doors, Drusilla flung them wide, glowering at the legion of Hands waiting in the dark beyond. Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. Black-clad and closemouthed, awaiting orders like obedient lambs.
This was never how it was meant to be.
This was supposed to be a house of wolves, not sheep.
“You will search every inch of this library,” she told them. “Every shelf, every nook. Do no harm to the books, and the worms will do no harm to you. But you will find what I seek.” She raised the first two chronicles in her hands, displayed them before the servants. “The third in this chronicle. Mercurio of Liis the