child of the library. What had it meant? How had it known? The Book of Eyes had said there was something different about her, too.
She took one step toward the atrium. Before she could take a second, a hand shot from the mist and seized her cloak. With ruthless strength, it dragged her from the center of the hallway and into the same alcove she had hidden in before. But when the hand fell away, she didn’t bolt or reach for Demonslayer. Silas stood in front of her, luminously pale, crouched between the hooded figures carved into the wall.
So he didn’t abandon me after all, she thought in wonderment. But where has he been?
Before she could ask the question aloud, he held a finger to his lips. His yellow eyes flicked toward the hallway.
Lights shone through the mist. Wheels groaned as something heavy rolled along the corridor, accompanied by footsteps. The sounds swirled eerily, distorted by the stone and the mist, but they had to be coming from the direction of the vault. Elisabeth held her breath as the first warden emerged into view. She had a lantern in one hand, a drawn sword in the other. More wardens followed, a good dozen in all. Near the head of the procession strode Mistress Wick, elegant in her long indigo robes, and a man who could be none other than the Royal Library’s Director. Medals decorated his blue coat. Gray hair fell loose to his shoulders, concealing some of the brutal scars that slashed across his face. Two fingers were missing from his hand, which rested on the hilt of an enormous broadsword.
“Are you certain this is wise, Marius?” asked Mistress Wick.
“No,” the man replied grimly. “But we cannot take the risk.”
Mistress Wick’s brow furrowed. “If the saboteur’s pattern continues, he is almost certain to strike Harrows. I can’t help but feel we are playing into his hands.”
“Be that as it may, there is no other vault in Austermeer that can contain the Chronicles of the Dead. The saboteur might decide to target the Royal Library at any time. And if he sets loose the Chronicles, every man, woman, and child in Brassbridge will be dead by sunrise.”
Elisabeth’s skin prickled. She didn’t recognize the title, but at Ashcroft’s dinner, Lady Ingram had mentioned a grimoire written by Baltasar Thorn—a grimoire of necromancy. Only a handful of necromantic texts existed. Were they discussing the same one?
“It’s true that Harrows is best prepared.” Mistress Wick gazed sightlessly ahead. “And Director Hyde?”
“Hyde understands his duty. He accepts that he will die if he must, if it comes to that. If his sacrifice saves thousands.”
The groaning and squeaking of the wheels drowned out their voices. A shape materialized from the darkness, sailing through the mist like a black ship skimming over ghostly waters. It was a cage, a great wheeled cage, which at first appeared to have nothing inside. Then the lamplight flowed through it, and Elisabeth made out an iron coffer hanging at the center, fixed there by a web of chains stretched taut from each of the cage’s corners.
Her mouth went dry, and a cold finger drew down her spine. The shadow that fell upon the wall between the wardens didn’t belong to a cage. Something else’s shape rippled along the stone, stretching all the way to the ceiling many stories above, where it crooked sideways to flow across the ribbed arches overhead. Taloned fingers twitched above the wardens as though grasping for them, each claw as long as a sword. Though the shadow was too vast, too distorted by the masonry for Elisabeth to discern its features, something about its form seemed chillingly familiar.
A Class Ten. The way they spoke of the grimoire, it had to be. Even as a future warden, she had never expected to see one. Much less that she would stumble across a transfer in progress—the first of its kind in hundreds of years.
Soon, all three of the kingdom’s Class Ten grimoires would be in the vault at Harrows.
TWENTY-TWO
ELISABETH DUNKED HER mop in the soapy bucket, then slopped it across the floor, pushing suds across the flagstones. Dirty water sloshed ahead, evicting booklice from their hiding places in the molding. She didn’t have the energy to chase them. As she watched one fat louse skitter in a panicked circle, she paused to lean on the mop. Her eyelids drifted shut. Just one moment. One moment to rest her eyes . . .