kept to the lesser streets where the towers were built closest together and the paths were too narrow for the carriages to pass through. Kate followed and was just starting to think that the collections of towers looked somehow familiar when they stepped out onto a wide street, right opposite the abandoned museum.
Kate and Silas climbed the steps to the main door, and there Silas hesitated. The door hung limp on its lowest hinge, its lock smashed, the way beyond exposed and black. He drew his sword, wrenched the door the rest of the way off in one pull and stepped inside.
Intruders had been in there, and whoever they were, they had not entered quietly. The huge main hall was completely ruined. Display cases had been smashed, upturned, and gutted on the floor; an old wooden counter had been crushed in two; and the skeletons of creatures hanging from the ceiling had their wires cut, leaving their bones scattered and unrecognizable on the floor.
Silas stepped farther in, watching for movement and picking a path through the debris. He did not care about being quiet. Anyone inside that building would be dead soon enough. He descended the stairs to the lower levels like a shadow. The pillar room was a mess: specimen jars smashed, work tables demolished, and the floor covered in slick shards of wet glass.
Kate followed him down to the rooms he used as his home, but those rooms were even worse than the first. Someone had torn his way through them, leaving Silas’s possessions strewn everywhere. He kept going, toward the room where he had taken Kate before. The door’s hinges hung loose, the fire was out, but someone had lit a small lantern upon the wide stone hearth, and the remains of a meal were left on the table.
Silas crept in, sword at the ready, and a deep scratching noise scraped behind the fireplace, making Kate stop in the doorway. Silas heard it, too. Loose soot trickled down the chimney and he advanced upon it, pressing his ear to the wall. Lightning-fast, he ducked into the chimney, reached up and grabbed a foot that kicked out in the darkness, sending soot spilling into the room. He dragged the foot and twisted it, making the chimney climber lose his grip and fall down hard, flailing and fighting as Silas pulled him out.
“Let me go! Let me go!”
Silas pinned him down with a foot upon his chest and raised his sword with two hands, its point down ready to strike. The squirming prisoner fought for his life, trying to push him away. His face was filthy, and half covered by the black hood of a warden’s robe, leaving just one frightened eye visible in the lantern light.
“Stop!” shouted Kate, but too late.
The blade flashed as Silas drove it down.
Chapter 17
The Secret Circle
The sword stabbed hard into the ground beside the intruder’s left ear, pinning his hood back and revealing Edgar’s frightened face.
“So, the boy with nine lives returns,” said Silas. “Where are the wardens? How many of them are here? What did Da’ru promise you in return for invading my home? Answer now . . . or I take the ear.”
Edgar threw his hands up to protect himself. “Wait! Wait! I didn’t do anything! I can explain!”
“Speak!”
Edgar looked over at Kate and slowly let his hands fall. “I was just hiding down here,” he said. “When the wardens came . . . I thought they’d followed me, but th-they wanted something else.”
“You’ve made yourself very comfortable for someone who is only hiding,” said Silas. “Why did you come here?”
“Da’ru knows I’m back in the city. I didn’t want to lead her to Kate or the Skilled, so I came here. I figured you’d had plenty of chances to kill me so far but you haven’t. When you took me out of the station you could have handed me right over to Da’ru, but you didn’t. If you really wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be here right now. So when the wardens saw me . . . this was the safest place I could think of to hide.” Edgar looked up the long blade beside his head. “I guess I was wrong.”
“Yes, you were,” said Silas, twisting the blade to graze Edgar’s ear. “If the wardens did not come here looking for you, what were they looking for?”
“They say you’re a traitor. They think you helped Kate escape. They’ve sent the dogs out to look for your trail.”
Silas twisted the