“Well,” she said, “you’re either lucky or blessed. Take your pick.”
Lenos cracked a nervous smile. “Which would you choose?”
Ear to the wood, she listened for signs of life. Nothing.
“Me?” she said, pushing open the doors. “I’d choose clever.”
The doors gave way onto rows of tables, books still open on top, pages rustling faintly in the drafty room.
At the back of the library, beyond the final set of shelves, she found Tieren’s study. A towering pile of scrolls sat on the desk. Pots of ink and books lined the walls. A cabinet stood open, showing shelf after shelf of glass jars.
“Watch the door,” she said, her fingers tripping over the tinctures and herbs as she squinted at the names, written in a kind of shorthand Arnesian she couldn’t read. She sniffed one that looked like it held oil before tipping the mouth of the bottle against the pad of her thumb.
Tyger, Tyger, she sang to herself, stirring the power in her veins, unsheathing it the way she would a knife. She snapped her fingers, and a small flame burst to life in her hand. In its flickering light, Lila scanned the list of supplies, and got to work.
* * *
“I think that’s it,” she said, shouldering the canvas bag. Scrolls threatened to spill out, and vials clattered softly inside, bottles of blood and ink, herbs and sand and other things the names of which made no sense. In addition to Tieren’s list, she’d nicked a flask of something called “sleep sweet” and a tiny ampule marked “seer’s tea,” but she’d left the rest, feeling quite impressed with her restraint.
Lenos stood by the doors, one hand against the wood, and she didn’t know if he needed support or was simply listening, the way a sailor sometimes did to a coming storm, not with sound but touch.
“Someone is still knocking,” he said softly. “And I think there are more of them now.”
Which meant they couldn’t go out, not the way they’d come, not without trouble. Lila stepped into the hall and looked around at the branching paths, summoning to mind the map and wishing she’d had time to study more than her own intended path. She snapped her fingers. Fire came to life in her palm, and she held her breath as the flame settled, then began to dance subtly. Lila took off, Lenos on her heels as she followed the draft.
Behind them came the short sound of something rolling from a high shelf.
Lila spun, fire flaring in her hand, in time see the stone orb shatter on the floor.
She braced for an attack that never came. Instead, only a pair of familiar amethyst eyes caught the light.
“Esa?”
Alucard’s cat crept forward, hackles raised, but the moment she made toward it, the creature shied away, obviously spooked, and darted through the nearest open door. Lila swore under her breath. She thought of letting it go—she hated the cat, and she was pretty sure the feeling was mutual—but maybe it knew another way out.
Lila and Lenos followed the cat through one door and then a second, the rooms around them turning cold enough to frost. Beyond the third open door they found a kind of cloister, open to the morning air. A dozen arches led onto a garden, not groomed like the rest of the Sanctuary, but wild—a tangle of trees, some winter dead and others summer green. It reminded her of the palace courtyard where she’d found Rhy the day before, only without a shred of order. Flowers bloomed and vines snaked across the path, and beyond the garden—
But beyond the garden, there was nothing.
No arches. No doors. The cloisters faced the river, and somewhere beyond the wild foliage, the garden simply ended, dropping away into shadow.
“Esa?” she called, but the cat had darted between hedges and was nowhere to be seen. Lila shivered and swore at the sudden, cutting cold. She was already turning back toward the doors, but she could see the question in Lenos’s eyes. The whole crew knew how much the stupid cat meant to Alucard. He’d once jokingly told her that it was a talisman he kept his heart inside, but he’d also confessed that Esa was a gift from his beloved younger sister. Maybe in a way, both were true.
Lila swore and slung the satchel into Lenos’s arms. “Stay here.”
She turned her collar up against the cold and stormed into the garden, stepping over wild vines and ducking low branches. It was probably some kind of metaphor for the chaos of the natural world—she could almost hear Tieren lecturing her on treading lightly as she drew her sharpest knife and hacked an obnoxious vine aside.
“Here, Esa,” she called. She was halfway through the garden when she realized she could no longer see the path ahead. Or behind. It was as though she’d stepped out of London entirely, into a world made of nothing but mist.
“Come back, kitty,” she muttered, reaching the garden’s edge, “or I swear to god I will throw you into the …” Lila trailed off. The garden ended abruptly in front of her, roots trailing onto a platform of pale stone. And at the platform’s edge, just as she’d thought, there was no wall, no barrier. Only a sheer drop into the black slick of the Isle below.
“Haven’t you heard?”
Lila spun toward the voice and found a girl no taller than her waist standing between her and the garden’s edge. A novice dressed in white Sanctuary robes, her dark hair pulled cleanly back into a braid. Her eyes swirled with Osaron’s magic, and Lila’s fingers tightened on her blade. She didn’t want to kill the girl. Not if there was some part of her still inside, trying to get out. She didn’t want to, but she would.