crowd and Kate ran toward the black carriages that were gathered together within the circle of protection. She ducked behind a pair of frightened horses and ran past five carriages lined up behind them, until a door swung open farther down and a head of wild black hair leaned out.
“Edgar?”
“Quick!” Edgar shouted, reaching out an arm to help her up. “Get in.”
Kate grabbed his hand and climbed inside. Tom was in there with them, huddled on one of the seats with his knees pulled up to his chest, trying to block out everything that was going on.
“He’ll be okay,” Edgar said quickly. “What about Artemis? What’s happening?”
The gruesome sounds of Silas’s battle carried into the carriage and Kate let the horror of what they were hearing speak for itself.
“I have to close the circle,” she said, opening Wintercraft and turning desperately through its pages. “There are wardens behind me. Da’ru too. I don’t have much time.”
“Wait . . . wait!” said Edgar. “Think about this. You closed that circle in the museum, you can just do it again.”
“I don’t know how I did that!”
“But you still did it.” Edgar put his hands on the book, stopping Kate from looking any further. “Look, I don’t know much about this stuff, but I know what I’ve seen and I don’t think this book is all it’s cracked up to be. I saw you help Silas at the museum. You helped him, Kate! And I bet this book didn’t tell you how, did it?”
“Let go,” demanded Kate, trying to pull Wintercraft away from him, but Edgar held on tight.
“This book can’t make people do things,” he said. “It just points them in the right direction. The people who wrote it didn’t need it to do what they did. They just wrote about it all afterward. Think about it, Kate. I don’t know how it all works, but it does. I think you already know what to do. You just need to trust yourself. And you definitely don’t need this.”
Kate did not want to let go of Wintercraft. There was too much at stake to simply give in and trust that everything would be all right, but she felt her fingers weaken and Edgar slid the book away.
“All right,” he said carefully. “That crowd is going to start trampling one another out there soon. If you’re going to do something, now’s the time.”
“But it’s not my circle,” said Kate. “I don’t know how to stop it. Da’ru made it, not me.”
“Da’ru can’t do what you do. She used to spend hours trying to get a good circle going. With you standing next to her it took seconds. What do you think that means?”
Edgar ducked suddenly as glass splintered across the carriage floor and the window exploded against the force of a warden’s fist. A thick arm reached in to grab hold of his neck and Edgar used the book as a weapon, hitting it against the warden’s head to fend him off while Tom leaped to his aid, punching and biting whatever part of the attacker he could reach.
“Run, Kate!” Edgar shouted. “Run!”
Kate burst out of the carriage’s opposite door and saw Silas still locked in battle on the other side of the circle. He had taken at least ten of his attackers down already, leaving the ground around him stained with blood, but not all of that blood belonged to the wardens. Silas was wounded. His injuries were coming too quickly for his body to heal itself before others took their place. The wardens were brutal, surrounding him like a pack of dogs and challenging him all at once, their daggers flashing in the night. Kate could see the pain of every blow written across Silas’s tortured face. He would not be able to keep them away for long.
Two of the wardens tried to restrain Silas with ropes and chains, but he claimed the chain as a new weapon and strangled them with it before they could get close. His face was bloodied and twisted with rage, and Kate was worried that this was a battle he would not win. Then Da’ru rounded the front of the carriage just a few steps away from her. She had hesitated too long.
“Give me the book,” Da’ru said, as Kate backed toward the edge of the protected circle. “Give it to me!”
Da’ru grabbed hold of Kate’s arm before she could move, and Kate felt the veil’s energy crackle and snap beneath her skin. She sank into