The courtyard slid past, and the gates fell behind them. As they passed the orchard and picked up speed, a muffled conversation carried through the wall. Elisabeth inspected the window, then slipped open its latch, hoping to overhear something useful. Nathaniel’s voice wafted in on a trickle of fresh air.

“I do wish you would stop bringing up demons in public,” he was saying.

The servant’s soft voice answered, barely audible above the clopping of the horses’ hooves. “I can’t help myself, master. It’s in my nature.”

“Well, your nature vexes me.”

“My sincerest apologies. Would you like me to change?”

“Not now,” Nathaniel said. “You’ll spook the horses, and frankly, I have no idea how to drive a carriage.”

Elisabeth’s brow wrinkled. Spook the horses? What was he talking about?

“You truly should learn how to do things for yourself, master,” the servant replied. “It would be useful if you could tie your own cravat, for example, or for once manage to put your cloak on the right side out—”

“Yes, yes, I know. Just try to behave more normally around the girl. It wouldn’t do for her to find out.” Nathaniel paused. “Is that window open?”

She jerked away as a swirl of green light twined around the latch and forced the window shut, cutting off their conversation. She could try again later, but she suspected the latch would remain stuck fast for the remainder of the journey.

The little she had overheard filled her with dread. It sounded as though the servant was Nathaniel’s accomplice in the scheme to kill her. Before the coach stopped for the night, she needed to formulate a plan. Planning had always been Katrien’s strength, not hers. But if she failed to escape, she would die, and if she died, she would never bring the Director’s murderer to justice.

Desperate for inspiration, she looked out the window again, only to confront a view she didn’t recognize: sheep grazing on a hill, surrounded by woodland. She sought and found the Great Library beyond the trees, nestled amid a patchwork of farms, its brooding towers looming above the countryside amid wreaths of gray cloud. She had gazed out of those towers her entire life, dreaming of her future far away. Doubtless she had gazed at this very road, understanding the landscape as a bird might, now finding it strange and unfamiliar from the ground.

She pressed her forehead against the glass, swallowing back the ache in her throat. This was the farthest she had ever been from Summershall. After so long dreaming, it seemed cruel beyond measure that she was to receive her first and very likely last taste of the world as a captive, a traitor to everything she held dear.

The carriage swung around a bend in the road, and Summershall’s rooftops vanished behind the hill. Soon the trees closed in, and the Great Library, too, was gone.

SEVEN

THE COACH JOSTLED, shaking Elisabeth awake. She sat up, wincing at the crick in her neck, then froze, every sense on the alert. She heard only insects singing—no hooves clattering, no wheels rattling over the road. The coach had come to a stop. It was dark out, but lamplight shone disorientingly through the crack in the curtains. Peering between them, she found that they’d drawn up outside an old stone inn.

The door’s latch turned. She slumped back into the position from which she’d just awoken, her mind racing. Through her eyelashes, she watched Nathaniel lean inside, his face a pale blur in the dark. The wind had left his hair tousled, its silver streak agleam.

“I hope you haven’t died in here, Miss Scrivener,” he said.

She didn’t move. She barely allowed herself to breathe.

“It would be rather inconvenient for me if you did,” he went on. “There would be all sorts of tedious meetings, an inquest, an accusation or two of murder . . . Miss Scrivener?”

Elisabeth still did not move.

Nathaniel heaved a sigh and climbed into the carriage. Her pulse pounded as he drew nearer, carrying with him the smell of night air and sorcery. What she planned to do was dangerous. But she had no choice—or at least, she had no better one.

When he reached for her shoulder, she came to life. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and when her teeth sank into his hand, he shouted. In a flash she was outside the carriage and running. The lights of the inn juddered up and down as she sprinted toward the road. They winked out of sight when she skidded down the embankment on the opposite side, and for a terrible moment, tumbling over rocks, she saw nothing: only blackness lay ahead. Then she struck the bottom with a splash. Water flooded her stockings, accompanied by the stench of mud and rotten weeds. She had landed in a ditch. Beyond, she made out a gloomy tangle of branches—a thicket.

She plunged inside. Twigs lashed her face, and leaves snagged in her hair. Her heart seized as something clamped down on her shoulder, but it was only another branch, disturbed by her passage. She half expected the trees to come alive around her; for their roots to uncoil from the earth like snakes and wrap around her ankles. But there was no sign of pursuit. No sign, in fact, of anything else living at all.

If there were animals in these woods—birds, squirrels—they had all fallen silent, leaving her alone with the sounds of her harsh breathing and her crashing progress through the brush. At first the silence didn’t trouble her, not so late at night. Then she thought, Where have the crickets gone?

She burst into a clearing and stumbled to a halt. Nathaniel’s servant, Silas, stood in front of her. His hands were folded behind his back, and he wore a slight, apologetic smile. Not a single white strand had escaped the ribbon that tied his hair. He was so pale that he resembled a ghost against the shadowed trees.

Terror clutched her throat with strangling fingers. “How did you get here?” she asked, her voice a thread in the dark. She should have seen him chasing her. At the very least, she should have heard him. It was as though he had appeared from thin air.

“All good servants have their secrets,” he replied, “which are better left unspoken, lest they spoil the illusion so dear to the master and his guests. Come.” He extended a gloved hand. “It’s cold outside, and dark. A warm bed awaits you at the inn.”

He was right. Elisabeth suddenly felt foolish for running through the woods at this hour. She couldn’t even recall why she had fled. She took a step toward him, then balked, darting a look around. Why did she trust Silas? She didn’t know him. He was going to help Nathaniel—

“Please, miss,” he said quietly. “It’s for the best. Dreadful things roam the shadows while the human world sleeps. I wouldn’t like to see you harmed.”

Concern and sorrow transformed his features into those of an angel, easing her fears. No one so beautiful, so full of sadness, could have anything but her best interests at heart. She stepped forward as though hypnotized. “What sort of dreadful things?” she whispered.

Without any effort, Silas lifted her into his arms. “It is better if you do not know,” he murmured, almost too softly for her to hear.

She gazed up at his face in wonder. The moon shone silver overhead, the black branches laced beneath it like fingers clasped in prayer. Frosted by its glow, Silas looked as though he were spun from moonlight himself. He carried her between the silent trees, over the ditch, and back across the road.