beside Elisabeth. “The battle isn’t over yet,” she said in a tone of authority, “and these two aren’t our enemies. Those of you who can still walk, clear a position for the sorcerer on the rampart. He’s a magister. We need him.” When none of the wardens reacted, she shouted, “Move!”
Before Elisabeth could respond, she found herself hastened alongside Nathaniel toward the stairway. The warden in charge watched them askance. “You had better not make me regret this. Have either of you seen the Director?”
“The Malefict killed him,” Elisabeth said hoarsely.
She looked grim, but unsurprised. “I suppose that means I’m the Director now.” She paused, glancing at Silas before her eyes flicked to Nathaniel. “That’s your demon, I take it?”
“Ah,” Nathaniel said, shaking a few last sparks from his fingertips. Deliberately, he avoided looking at the injured wardens still rolling around in the courtyard, clutching their broken legs. “I’m afraid so, Director.”
The warden—the new Director—was frowning. Elisabeth braced herself for disaster. But all she said was, “He’s a bit small,” and turned back ahead.
Their boots clattered on the metal grating. When they reached the top, smoke billowed over them in rancid clouds. Amid the haze, the wardens toiling over the cannons were little more than dark smudges picked out by the glow of torches. Elisabeth rushed to the crenellations and looked down. A smoldering mass lay crumpled at the base of the wall, surrounded by toppled barricades, whose spikes combed the smoke as it streaked away in the wind. But the fallen Malefict wasn’t disintegrating into ash.
“It isn’t dead,” she shouted back.
“I would be greatly obliged if you could make it dead, Magister,” the Director said. “As quickly as possible, for all our sakes.”
Veiled in smoke, Nathaniel and Elisabeth exchanged a look. She knew the truth: there was no way to contain a monster this dangerous. Ashcroft hadn’t given them a choice. She imagined the Chronicles getting loose and rampaging through Brassbridge, smashing towers with its claws, leaving a trail of dead and dying in its wake. How would that compare to an invasion of demons? How many casualties, how much destruction? She did not know. It was as though she stood behind a scale, blindfolded, and it was her responsibility to weigh one disaster against another, to choose the way in which the world would end. As she and Nathaniel gazed into each other’s eyes, the fate of thousands hovered in the air between them, and there was no time to speak or even think—only to act.
“Yes,” she said, each word an agony. “Do it.”
“I doubt more lightning will work,” Nathaniel said, turning back to the Director. “I’ll have to try something else. Give me a moment.” He closed his eyes.
Elisabeth’s free hand clenched as she stepped back beside Silas. He was gazing out over the rampart, expressionless, the wind stirring his hair, which was beginning to come loose from its ribbon. She grasped at one last hope. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” she asked him.
“I am not capable of miracles, Miss Scrivener.” His lips barely moved, as though he were truly carved from alabaster. “I cannot fight the creature; it is the creation of my former master. Baltasar’s orders forbid me, even centuries after his death.”
She hesitated as an idea occurred to her. Silas’s claim wasn’t entirely true. If she freed him from his bonds, he would no longer be constrained by Baltasar’s orders—by anything. He could stop this from happening. He would have the power to save them all.
“But I would not,” he murmured. “You know that I would not.”
His tone stopped her cold. “I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t certain what she was sorry for, precisely—for the thought she had had, or for the hunger in Silas’s eyes.
He inclined his head. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened. “Down,” he spat. “Down!”
It was the first time she had ever heard him raise his voice. Everything turned sideways as he seized her and Nathaniel and flung them to the ground. The Malefict rose up over the rampart, smoke pouring from its mouth and slitted nostrils, eyes fulminating a foul, necromantic green. Silas pressed them flat as a colossal arm swept over the crenellations. Wind howled over Elisabeth, battering her senses, tearing at her clothes. A horrible sucking grayness dimmed her consciousness; she felt as though her life were a guttering candle being buffeted by a gale. Her hearing faded, and her vision dimmed. There came an eruption of green flame before the world split apart, shattering like