Sorcery of Thorns (26 page)

Elisabeth hung back as Parsifal chattered away, staring aghast at the demon in her arms. His nose and
the pads on his paws contrasted pinkly with his snowy fur. He was very fluffy. She felt an alarming urge to press her face against his belly, as
though he were truly a cat and not an ancient, immortal being.

“Did Nathaniel send you to make sure I didn’t get into trouble?” she whispered. Silas gave her a slow blink, which seemed to mean “yes.” She scowled. “I’m not going to get caught by Ashcroft.
I went sixteen years without seeing a sorcerer in Summershall—I’m not about to run into one here. And in any case, I’ll be wearing a hood.”

“Mew,” said Silas. Even his meow was adorable. Elisabeth shuddered and put him down. He trotted after them, swishing his plumy tail.

Parsifal led her through the remainder of the Northeast Wing, past the reading rooms, and into the central atrium, which
could have fit the entire Great Library of Summershall inside. It was a colossal octagonal space from which the four wings branched off beneath arches embellished with bronze scrolls and angels. The domed roof was made of stained glass, deep blue and spangled with constellations. Gracefully sculpted marble stairways ascended to the upper levels, where the shelves rose higher and higher until they
grew lost in the dome’s indigo-tinted haze. Librarians bustled across the checkered marble floor, their status differentiated not only by the number of keys on their key ring, but also by the shade of their robes, ranging from light to dark blue.

While Parsifal chattered on, she shut her eyes, letting the echoing, papery murmurings of the grimoires wash over her. She hadn’t realized how badly
she’d missed being in a Great Library until now—like something deep inside her, misaligned since leaving Summershall, had shifted back into its proper place. She was home.

She clung to the sensation as Parsifal showed her the statues that moved ladders on command, the tiled map of the library
set into the center of the atrium’s floor, and the pneumatic tubes hidden behind the bookshelves that
carried messages across the building at lightning speed. While he did so, he explained what she could expect working alongside grimoires.

“You catch on awfully fast,” he said, impressed. “It’s too bad you aren’t an orphan. Oh, that came out wrong. What I mean is, you would’ve made an excellent apprentice.”

The compliment struck Elisabeth like a blow. For a moment she felt disoriented, as though
she had been thrown outside her body. When people looked at her now, they didn’t see an apprentice librarian, and certainly not a future warden. Perhaps they were right. After using a forbidden magical artifact and conspiring to steal from the Royal Library, even stopping Ashcroft might not be enough to earn her apprenticeship back. Was this shadow of her former life all she had left?

“Thank
you,” she said, gazing at the floor so Parsifal wouldn’t see her expression.

Fortunately, he didn’t notice anything wrong as he ushered her toward the entrance to the Northwest Wing. Foreboding prickled Elisabeth’s skin as they drew near. The angelic figures carved around the archway had skulls beneath their hoods, and the entrance was cordoned off with a velvet rope. Beyond the rope, shadows
engulfed the wing. A thick mist spilled across the floor, and low mutterings and whispers chased down the corridor, reverberating from the stone. They seemed to be coming from behind an iron gate that reared from the darkness, over a dozen feet tall, mist swirling around its edges. She dimly heard Parsifal explain that this wing contained the entrance to the vault.

“But what is that gate?” she
asked.

“That’s the entrance to the restricted archives. The grimoires
inside there are almost dangerous enough for the vault, but not quite. Don’t worry—you won’t be assigned to the Northwest Wing. Now, if we hurry up the South Spire, we might be in time to see the wardens training on the grounds.”

As they turned to go, Silas stared bright-eyed into the wing’s shadows, and she wondered what
he saw that she could not.

•  •  •

When Elisabeth got back to Nathaniel’s house that night, she was so exhausted that she ate supper and fell directly into bed. Then she woke early the next morning and began the fifteen minute walk to the Royal Library through Hemlock Park, Silas trailing after her in the predawn gloom like a cat-shaped ghost. It wasn’t likely that Ashcroft would happen to pass
her in a carriage, but just in case, she stayed off the main street and took a circuitous route through hedged-in walking paths and a section of wooded park. She passed only servants plucking breakfast herbs from the backyard gardens, tossing out shovelfuls of soot, and emptying their households’ chamber pots. She felt a squirm of guilty embarrassment upon realizing Silas must normally be responsible
for those tasks—though truly, she couldn’t picture him doing them.

The last leg of the walk took her past the Collegium’s grounds. Horses poked their noses out of the stone stables, smelling sweetly of hay and warm bodies. A low-hanging mist silvered the lawn where wardens practiced swordplay. She tried to ignore the ache in her chest at the sight of the dormitories, decorated with gargoyles
and ornate gables, where wardens lived when they began their training. Now that she had come to scrub the floors, her dream of joining them seemed as though it belonged to someone else.

Once she reached the servants’ entrance of the Royal Library, she was instantly put to work by an old servant named Gertrude, who supervised her closely as she hauled a soapy bucket across the flagstone floor.
Next she swept and dusted an unused reading room, and helped Gertrude carry out the rugs to be beaten. As the day stretched on, frustration simmered beneath her skin. She wouldn’t get any closer to locating the Codex with Gertrude watching her like a hawk. The elderly servant even insisted on taking lunch with her, which eliminated all hope of Elisabeth seizing a chance to sneak off and check the
catalogue.

But an opportunity arrived after lunch, when Elisabeth moved an armchair to sweep underneath it, and in doing so disturbed a nest of booklice. The lice went skittering in every direction, gray and chitinous, the young ones no larger than chicken eggs. Elisabeth let out a ferocious cry and began smacking them with her broom. When several fled toward the door, she at last sensed the
taste of freedom.

“Slow down, girl!” Gertrude shouted, but Elisabeth pretended not to hear as she dashed around the corner, chasing the lice with her broom lofted like a javelin. Gertrude soon fell behind, wheezing. From there, Elisabeth only had to make a few more turns before she was out of sight.

She checked herself as she entered the atrium, reducing her speed to what she hoped was a purposeful-looking
stride. She cut a path through the librarians and ducked behind a pillar. The catalogue room was set into the facet of the octagon opposite the Royal Library’s front doors. All she had to do was sneak inside, go through the catalogue drawers, and find the card with the Codex’s location. But when she peered around the pillar, her spirits plummeted.

The room bustled with activity. Librarians of
every rank climbed ladders and consulted each other over desks, overseen by a bespectacled archivist. No one would look at her twice if she were wearing an apprentice’s pale blue robes, but she was certain the archivist would notice her if she went up one of the ladders and started going through the tiny gilded drawers that covered every inch of the walls. And there weren’t many places to hide in
there, aside from beneath the desks and behind a few display cases containing grimoires.

She eyed the nearest display case. The grimoire inside looked familiar, and indeed, she recognized it from Summershall, where another copy was on display in the hall outside the reading room. It was an ostentatious-looking Class Four called Madame Bouchard’s Harmonic Cantrips, its cover bracketed in gold
and stitched with peacock feathers. Elisabeth’s heart raced as a plan began to unfold within her mind. The only problem was that she couldn’t do it alone.

A throaty growl drew her attention to the nearest section of bookcases. A marmalade-colored cat crouched there, fur standing on end, its tail lashing back and forth. Opposite it sat Silas, looking supremely unconcerned. As the other cat continued
to yowl, he raised one of his dainty paws and licked it.

“Silas,” Elisabeth hissed. She went over and scooped him up. The other cat bolted. “I need your help,” she whispered, ignoring the strange look sent to her by a passing apprentice.

Silas gazed at her levelly.

“It’s important,” she tried.

His tail flicked, in a fashion that suggested he was feeling inconvenienced. She suspected he still
hadn’t gotten over the Sir Fluffington incident.

“If you leave me to my own devices,” she told him, “I’m
likely to get into trouble, and I’m certain Nathaniel wouldn’t appreciate that.”

Silas’s yellow eyes narrowed. Slowly, he blinked.

Elisabeth sagged in relief. “Good. Now, here’s what I need you to do. . . .”

None of the librarians in the catalogue room paid any mind when, a few minutes
later, a small white cat trotted inside. Not a soul reacted when he leaped onto one of the desks and minced across it. But they did pay attention when Silas launched himself at the glass display case, knocked it askew, and promptly streaked from the scene, looking for all the world like an ordinary cat that had gotten himself into unexpected trouble. Everyone froze as the case wobbled once—twice—then
tumbled to the floor and shattered.

Madame Bouchard’s Harmonic Cantrips seemed to have been waiting its entire life for this moment. It rose gloriously from the wreckage, unfurling a set of paper wings, which were a good seven or eight feet across. As the librarians shielded their heads from its flapping pinions, it spread its pages wide and unleashed a shrill, operatic wail. Desks trembled.
Drawers rattled. The archivist’s spectacles cracked. Librarians fled in every direction, covering their ears against the ear-splitting vibrato.

Elisabeth waited until the last librarian emptied out before she darted inside. She set her teeth against the noise—seeing that it possessed an audience, Madame Bouchard had launched into an aria—and glanced around at the drawers. The cataloguing system
was different here than in Summershall, and there had to be thousands of drawers altogether. However, she swiftly determined that the drawers were divided into seven different columns, with bronze numerals fixed above them ranging from I to VII. Those had to represent grimoire classes, with classes
Eight through Ten omitted from the public catalogue.

She had previously estimated that the Codex
was either a Class Five or a Class Six. She clambered up the ladder belonging to the Class Five section first, and found the drawer marked “Pe—Pi.” After flipping through the cards and finding nothing, she checked the drawer labeled “Ci—Co,” in case the grimoires were catalogued by title instead of author. When that proved unsuccessful, she moved to the Class Six section with her nerves shrieking
nearly as loudly as Madame Bouchard. During the brief intervals in which the grimoire paused for breath, she heard shouts ringing across the atrium, rapidly drawing closer.

She found the Codex’s card in the last drawer she checked, glanced at it, and slammed the drawer shut. As she leaped off the ladder, a warden came striding inside with a salt round at the ready and a length of iron chain.
He stared at Elisabeth in bewilderment. She seized her broom and clutched it tightly.

“What are you doing in here?” he shouted over Madame Bouchard, who was now energetically practicing scales.

Elisabeth swept a bit of broken glass aside. “I’m cleaning up the mess, sir!” she shouted back.

A whirlwind of chaos ensued. The warden at last handed her off to an equally baffled librarian, who said,
“Well, I must commend you for going above and beyond the call of duty, girl,” and brought her back to Gertrude, who gave her a thorough scolding. But Elisabeth wasn’t in any real trouble, for she could hardly be punished for sweeping a floor.

She spent the rest of the day meekly obeying Gertrude’s commands. Under different circumstances she wouldn’t have been able to wait to race back home and
tell Katrien what she had done, as it was exactly the sort of story that her friend would love. But what she had seen on the catalogue card shadowed her
mood like a dark cloud. She didn’t want to tell Katrien about it; she didn’t even want to think about it herself.

The Codex Daemonicus wasn’t going to be easy to steal, because it was shelved in the restricted archives of the Northwest Wing.

TWENTY

E
LISABETH SLEPT POORLY that night, and had unsettling dreams. In them, she walked down the Northwest Wing’s dark corridor, the gate looming larger and larger above her, stretching impossibly high. As she drew near, the gate
creaked open of its own accord. A shape stood within the swirling mist beyond, waiting for her, its presence suffusing her with bone-deep horror. Before she made out who or what it was, she always jolted awake.

She wished she could speak to Katrien again, but the mirror’s magic only renewed itself every twelve hours or so, and they had to save their brief conversations for important matters.
They couldn’t lie in bed and talk well into the night as they had in Summershall, bright-eyed and restless in the dark. As a last resort Elisabeth imagined she was back in their drafty tower room, snug beneath the familiar weight of her quilt, safe behind the library’s thick stone walls, until she drifted once more.