“Are you ready, Miss Scrivener?” he asked, offering her his arm.

Elisabeth’s heart skipped a beat. She might have misjudged Nathaniel, but she had been right about one thing. A sorcerer did want her dead. And somewhere out there, he was waiting.

Chilled to the bone, she nodded and took his arm.

ELEVEN

THE COACH PASSED tall, grand houses of gray stone, stacked tightly alongside each other like books on a bookshelf. Bright blooms of foxglove and deadly nightshade spilled from their window boxes, and wrought iron fences bordered them in front, guarded by statues and gargoyles that turned their heads as the coach passed. Heraldic devices were carved upon the pediments above the front doors. Many of the houses were clearly centuries old, their elegant facades wrapped in a sense of untouchable wealth.

She watched a woman exit a carriage, jewels glittering on her ears. A small child opened the door for her, and Elisabeth assumed he was the woman’s son until she dismissively handed him her shopping parcels. She saw the boy’s eyes flash orange in the light before the door swung shut. Not a boy—a demon.

“Does this entire neighborhood belong to sorcerers?” she asked Nathaniel. Her stomach writhed like a nest of snakes. The saboteur could live in any one of these houses. He could be watching her even now.

“Almost exclusively,” he replied. He was looking out the opposite window. “It’s called Hemlock Park. Sorcerers like their privacy—our demons are a bit like dirty laundry, not a secret, but an aspect of our lives that commoners rarely see, and one that we prefer they don’t think about too much. A lot of old blood around here, as you can probably tell. Sorcerous lineages that go back hundreds of years, like mine.”

Curiosity snuck through her guard. “I thought all sorcerers belonged to old families. Aren’t you born into it?”

“I suppose that’s true in the sense that magic is an inheritance.” Nathaniel spared her a glance. “Or rather, demons are. A highborn demon can only be summoned by someone who knows its Enochian name, and families pass those names down through the generations like heirlooms. But occasionally a dabbler with no magical heritage digs up the name of a notable demon in some obscure text and manages to summon it. They have to keep the demon in the family for a few decades before the old houses begin to consider them respectable.”

Dabblers and criminals. That was how the Lexicon had referred to people who summoned lesser demons, like fiends. True sorcerers didn’t stoop to that level.

Not unless they wanted to eliminate a witness, and blame the murder on someone else.

Disturbed, Elisabeth mulled this over as they passed a park full of ancient oaks and winding gravel paths, and then a patch of urban woodland that made her feel like she was back on the outskirts of the Blackwald. The coach turned onto a drive flanked by marble plinths. A matching pair of stone gryphons sat atop them, flicking their tails and sunning their mossy wings. Eventually a structure came into view beyond a hedge, first visible as a flash of light on the copper of a domed cupola.

“Oh,” she breathed, pressing her face to the window. “It’s a palace!”

She felt Nathaniel watching her. When he spoke, he sounded oddly reluctant to correct her. “No, just Ashcroft Manor.”

But there was no “just” about the building they were heading toward, an immense white manor surrounded by lavish gardens. Its roofline of towers, domes, and elaborate cornices resembled the skyline of a miniature city, and the sunlight threw dazzling prisms from a glass-roofed conservatory attached to its side. The drive circled around a large fountain directly in front, and as they drew nearer she saw that the water lifted by itself, splashing in vortices that continually changed shape: first it formed a group of translucent maidens leaping into the air like ballet dancers, who merged into a rotating armillary sphere, which next split apart into a pair of rearing horses, their manes tossing droplets across the drive. A few of the droplets struck the coach’s windows and clung to the glass, sparkling like diamonds.

“And Silas says I’m extravagant with my magic,” Nathaniel muttered.

Elisabeth made an effort to stop gaping openmouthed as they neared the manor. A crowd of people stood scattered around the drive, but as far as she could tell, they weren’t sorcerers or even servants. They all wore brown tweed jackets and had notebooks tucked under their arms, repeatedly consulting their pocket watches as if they were in a great hurry. When they heard the carriage approaching, they looked up with hungry, eager expressions, like dogs waiting for scraps to be thrown from the dinner table.

“Who are those people?” Elisabeth asked uneasily. “They look like they’re waiting for us.”

Nathaniel slid over to her side of the coach, looked out, and swore. “Chancellor Ashcroft’s allowed the press onto his estate. I suppose there’s no escaping them. Courage, Scrivener. It will all be over soon.”

When Silas opened the door, a wave of sound immediately swamped the coach. No one spared Silas a glance; they focused on Elisabeth as she stepped outside, jostling between themselves for a better position near the front of the crowd.

“Miss Scrivener!” “Do you have a moment—” “I’m Mr. Feversham from the Brassbridge Inquirer—” “Over here, Miss Scrivener!” “Can you tell us how tall you are, Miss Scrivener?”

“Hello,” she said bemusedly. All the men looked very similar. Never before had she seen so many mustaches together in one place. “I’m sorry—I have no idea.” She had grown since the last time Katrien had measured her.

“Is it true that you defeated a Class Eight Malefict in Summershall?” one of the men asked, already scratching away frantically in his notebook.

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Completely on your own?”

She nodded. The man’s eyes nearly popped from his head, so she added kindly, “Well, I had a sword.”

Another tweed-clad reporter dodged through an opening. “I see you’ve been spending a great deal of time alone with Magister Thorn. Has he declared his intentions?”

“I wish he would,” Elisabeth said. “He hardly makes sense half the time. Knowing his intentions would be helpful.”

Nathaniel made a choking sound. “She doesn’t mean it that way,” he assured everyone, taking Elisabeth’s arm. “She’s a feral librarian, you see—raised by booklice, very tragic. . . .” He tugged her out of the crowd and up the manor’s front steps.

The double doors were engraved with a baroque-style gryphon. A footman dressed in golden livery stood in front of them. Elisabeth eyed him suspiciously, but he didn’t have strangely colored eyes, nor did he repel her thoughts the way Silas had while exerting his influence. He was a man, not a demon.

“The Chancellor will arrive momentarily,” he said, and Nathaniel groaned.

“What?” she asked.

“Ashcroft enjoys making grand entrances. He’s an insufferable show-off. The press can’t get enough of him.”

Elisabeth thought it was rather hypocritical for Nathaniel to complain about people making grand entrances when he himself had arrived at Summershall in a carriage carved all over with thorns, and had made every statue in the courtyard come alive and at least one of them wave a sword, but she decided to keep that to herself, because she had just caught a whiff of aetherial combustion.