LOGINI sent for him at first light.I told the guard at my door that I needed the Prince, that it was important, and that I'd be obliged if he came alone. The guard looked at me for a moment, at my wet hair, at my face, and said nothing. Then he went. I'd have liked to know what he thought. I'd have liked, even more, not to care.Adrian came within the hour.He had his coat on over the sling and hadn't done up the collar. He stopped just inside the door, and I saw his face change. It was a small thing, a tightening at the corner of the mouth, but I'd learned to read him by now."You've been burning something," he said."Close the door."He closed it. He stood with his good hand still on the handle, looking at me, and I understood that he could smell it, even now. I'd rinsed my hair in the basin twice. It wasn't enough."Lily.""I went down last night," I said. "I found it. I'm sorry. I should have woken you, and I didn't, and I'd rather you shouted at me now than later."For a moment he di
I made myself walk.Not run. Running leaves a trail of noise, and I'd had enough of leaving trails. I went back along the old corridor with my hand against the wall, and the silver lines lit my feet a few steps at a time. I had no lamp. I'd left it on a table in a burning room. The wards were all the light I had, and I was grateful to them in a way I couldn't have explained to anyone.The smell of smoke followed me the whole way. It was in my hair and in the wool of my nightdress, thick and sour, like something I'd brought up from the dark by accident.At the cream-coloured door by my wardrobe I stopped, and put my ear to the wood. Beyond it, a guard coughed. He sounded bored.I let myself in.---My bedroom was dark and very quiet, with the last red thread of the fire in the grate, exactly as I'd left it. Nobody had been in. Nobody had noticed the bed was empty.I shut the little door behind me and stood with my back to it until my hands stopped shaking. Then I stirred the coals unti
I didn't read it. I didn't think about it. I put out my hand and took it.The flame had eaten the corner by then, and it bit my fingers as I pulled the sheet clear. I slapped the page against my nightdress to smother it and felt the heat go through the cloth to my skin. When I looked, the burned edge was a black crescent no wider than my thumbnail. The rest was whole.A single sheet, cream and heavy, folded once. I crushed it inside the front of my nightdress, against my ribs, and the scar under my collarbone gave a hot little pulse, like a nod.*Now go.*---The aisle to the door was still burning on both sides. I'd looked at it long enough to know there was no waiting for it to improve.I pulled the neck of my nightdress up over my nose. I ran.It wasn't brave. It was only that standing still had stopped being possible. The flames roared up on either side, close enough that I felt the hair on my arms curl, and the smoke came down on me like a wet blanket and took the whole room away
I'd thought a fire would start small. This one didn't.The oil ran along the spines and the flame ran after it, low and quick, and by the time I'd drawn a breath the whole first rank of red leather was alight. Orange light jumped across the vault. My hiding place, black a moment ago, filled with it.I pulled my knees in and kept still. The figure hadn't gone.It stood in the middle of the floor with the glow on its cloak, watching the shelves take. It didn't flinch from the heat. After a while it bent, picked up the empty satchel, and folded the oilcloth into a small neat square, the way you'd fold a napkin after a meal. Then it walked to the door.At the threshold it stopped and looked back. At the tree, I think. I couldn't see a face to be sure. Then it went through, and I heard a step on the stair, and another, climbing, as unhurried as when it came down.I counted ten before I moved. I'm not proud of that. They were the longest ten I've known, and the room was already roaring.The
I moved before I knew where I was going.My feet found the flagstones. My hands found the shelves. I went along them in the blackness with my fingers brushing the spines, one step at a time, counting to keep from thinking. Behind me the footsteps came down, down, down, soft and even, and the silver ring of runes round the door glimmered on the far side of the room like a coin at the bottom of a well.*Not the door. Not the table. Somewhere they won't look.*At the far end, where the last shelf met the wall, I found a gap.It was barely wider than my shoulders. A narrow slot between the end of the shelving and the curve of the stone, where someone had stacked flat wooden boxes, six or seven high, tied with silk, like a pile of folded linen. I slid in sideways. The boxes scraped my arm. I got down on my knees on the cold flags and pulled my skirts in after me, and put my back to the wall, and made myself small.I couldn't see anything.I could hear. That was all I had. My own breath, mu
The sheet had been folded and refolded so often that the creases had worn to a soft, furred white, and it opened in my hands as readily as a flower.A single page. Heavy cream paper, written edge to edge in a clerk's formal hand. The lines were ruled, the letters even, the ink still black. It had none of the sorrow of the scribe's last pages. It was cold and plain and precise. Every word had been chosen to be obeyed.I held it under the lamp.*By the will of the throne of Eldoria, and in the sight of the Court assembled,**It is decreed that the House of the Hearth, having been found a danger to the peace of the realm and to the free will of its peoples, is condemned.**Let its wards be broken. Let its halls be put to the flame. Let its records be sealed or burned. Let its line be ended in every branch, and let no heir be spared, nor hidden, nor carried out of the realm.**Let this be done swiftly, and without mercy, and let it never be spoken of again.**Sealed this day, in the prese







