eyes and then faded away to reveal the physical world.
Once again Nicodemus stood swaying before the Index.
A vivid knowledge of the anti-golem spell now burned in his brain. Shannon wanted him to have this when he took the boys up to the compluvium, Nicodemus realized. With this spell he could endanger the golem’s author without having to find its true body.
A shiver rushed up Nicodemus’s back. He needed to return to the Drum Tower.
The Index lay before him. Closing the book made the halo of purple sentences collapse back into its pages. After a long breath, he turned away and started for the door.
“Don’t you want the book?” a quick, squeaking voice said.
Nicodemus jumped back. “Who’s there?” He began to write a club of simple Magnus sentences in his biceps.
From the corner stepped a lanky gargoyle with a snow monkey’s body, a bat’s giant ears, and an owl’s bulging eyes. Nicodemus recognized the construct he had misspelled in the Stacks. “Gargoyle, did I meet you last night?”
“Petra,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Now I’m named Petra.” She grinned at him before scampering to the doorway. “Take the book. You misspelled it like me.”
“But the alarm spell will—”
“Alarm spell nothing.” The gargoyle peeled a chord of faint Numinous sentences from one side of the doorway. “Get the book and step underthis.” She pulled the alarm spell free of the floor and held it up above her head.
Nicodemus stared at her for a moment, then fetched the Index. “But not even a grand wizard could move those sentences,” he said while ducking under the alarm.
She nodded and spoke rapidly. “Since you rewrote me, I can do things other constructs can’t. I can trade and bargain. I got these eyes from a night-watch gargoyle, the ears from a grunt who hunts mice. But I think I still only have secondary thoughts.” She looked up at him with childish curiosity. “What’s the difference between secondary and tertiary cognition?”
He grimaced. “Secondary constructs can’t remember anything about mortality. The academy claims they’re not fully sentient, so it’s not immoral to deconstruct them.”
The gargoyle started. One of her batlike ears flicked away and then back. “Mortality?”
Nicodemus nodded. “As in death. Secondary constructs can’t remember what it means to die.”
“But I think I still only have secondary thoughts. What is the difference between secondary and tertiary cognition?” Her tone was the same tone as before.
Nicodemus hugged the Index to his chest. “I’m sorry, Petra. I don’t know how to tell you.”
The gargoyle didn’t seem to be listening; her ears were flicking about in different directions. “You should go!” she whispered. “I see and hear many things now. There are corrupt gargoyles now. We constructs are all talking about them. No one knows who’s written them. They’re spying on the wizards.”
Nicodemus swallowed. “What about the gargoyles in the compluvium?”
“They’re uncorrupted,” she said. “You should leave this place now. Something bad is near.”
“Thank you, Petra,” he said and turned away.
She laughed and called after him, “Thank you, Nicodemus Weal. You are my author who made me my own author.”
Unsure of what to say, Nicodemus hurried away though the library’s cavernous center. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind. But when he stepped through the main entrance into the Women’s Atrium a realization made him stop.
“Los damn it!” he swore. Because the Index was misspelled, so might be his understanding of Shannon’s text. There was no telling if he could produce a functional respell. Fear tightened his throat. Writing this attack spell might even be dangerous.
He started to curse his cacography but then thought of Petra the gargoyle. It took him a moment to identify the warm feeling in his chest as pride—he hadn’t felt that for a long time.
He drew in a deep breath and looked up at the atrium’s ceiling. The mosaic of Uriel Bolide looked back at him. With her left hand, Bolide was pointing a red wand at a scroll she held in her right. Chips of amber had been used to depict her celebrated long hair.
Her smile was amused, as if she had just discovered the properties of magical advantage by applying a little femininity to a problem that had confounded the then all-male wizards.
Nicodemus was struck by how strongly the woman in the mosaic resembled April. In the nightmare, April’s image had stretched above him and her hair had become trains of stars. “Fly from Starhaven!” she had said. “Fly with anything you have!”
Again Nicodemus hugged the Index to his chest. It was all he had.