her name was Mildred.”
Silas snatched his hand back as the door swung open, dropping the keys with a hiss. A tendril of steam rose from his fingers. He moved to step away, but was arrested in midstride by Elisabeth, who seized him in an embrace, followed by Nathaniel, who hugged him from the other side. He froze, completely rigid, enduring their affection in the manner of a purebred house cat being squeezed by a toddler. When he twitched, they finally released him.
“We shall never speak of that,” he warned, brushing off his sleeves. “Miss Scrivener, if you would follow me, I believe your sword has been taken to the armory.”
She scooped up the key ring. The three of them crept through the dungeon’s passageways in single file, retreating into the shadows whenever a patrol’s torch came near. Fortunately Silas knew exactly where to go, and after several minutes they reached an iron-banded door, which Elisabeth was able to open with one of the keys. She gasped at the room beyond. Torchlight flickered not just over swords, but a bristling collection of axes, spears, crossbows, and even a spiked weapon she tentatively identified as a morning star. After recovering Demonslayer from an arms rack, she seized a belt and tightened it around her waist. As Nathaniel watched, amused by her enthusiasm, she stuffed its pouches full of salt rounds.
“What now?” he asked.
Elisabeth squeezed in a final salt round. “We need to find the vault. All we have to do is stop whoever’s come here from getting inside. Silas, did you pass it on your way to the dungeon?”
Silas had been strolling through the aisles, his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the weapons with an unreadable expression. He’d stopped in front of an ancient, cruel-looking device hanging from the ceiling, which resembled a giant cage filled with rusty spikes. Elisabeth’s heart skipped a beat, her eyes darting from the spikes to his wrists.
“No,” he said, turning away, “but I can sense the psychic emanations of the grimoires. I will take you there.”
He showed no sign of whether the device was the same variety Ashcroft had used to trap him. She cast the room another look as they left, seeing the racks of weaponry anew. For Silas, this place was a torture chamber.
When they snuck back into the passage, the ground shook with the force of a familiar-sounding howl.
“We must be near the Malefict,” Nathaniel said.
Silas inclined his head. “There is no way around it. All routes to the vault travel through this hall.”
Cautiously, they made their way around the corner. At the end, the passageway opened into a cavern, a space so large that its ceiling disappeared in a haze of smoke and shadow. Stalactites hung like teeth from the substanceless dark above. Below them, lit by fires in charred, smoking braziers, a sort of pit arena had been carved into the stone. Their boots clanged softly on the metal walkway that encircled it, bounded by railings. A ladder—one of several—descended to the sawdust-covered floor far below, which was marked by scuffs and grooves, as of those made by a restless, pacing animal.
Or a monster.
As they watched, the Malefict lumbered into view. It was the size of a small house, powerfully but crudely built, its bearlike form missing ears, a nose, and even eyes, the leather of its muzzle crisscrossed with badly stitched seams. A heavy chain dragged behind it, each link large enough to yoke an ox, the other end attached to a system of gears and pulleys fixed to the cavern’s wall. It wagged its head back and forth, disoriented by the pain of the iron collar around its neck. Ink wept from open sores, gleaming wet down its shoulders, and old scars scored its leather-bound hide. Nathaniel gazed down at it with a troubled expression. Feeling sick to her stomach, Elisabeth recalled the warden’s explanation upstairs.
“This is wrong,” she said. “It isn’t a practice dummy, to be beaten with weapons while it suffers in chains.”
Silas stopped beside her, his face impassive. “Do you not believe it an evil creature, Miss Scrivener?”
Her hand clenched around Demonslayer’s hilt. She was beginning to understand that evil wasn’t so simple a concept as she had once imagined. Perhaps it wasn’t wrong for Maleficts to want to hurt humans—the humans who had created them, imprisoned them, tormented them with salt and iron—and ultimately, consigned them to their twisted forms.
“None of this is its fault,” she said at last. “It didn’t choose to