by S. W. Clarke
Everyone’s attention strayed to him, councilors standing.
“Now who let a bloody cat in?” one of the councilors asked.
“Corner it,” another said, and soon feet were shuffling, the whole council moving to capture the darting cat. For the most powerful mages in Edinburgh, they were slow, ungainly, their hands closing over Loki’s shadow as he slipped beyond them.
Even Rathmore’s bodyguard had turned, focused completely on the cat.
This was our chance. Our best chance. Nobody was paying attention to the doors.
I grabbed Liara’s arm and grabbed the doorknob. I pulled it open, and in the same moment Liara slid through ahead of me and into the hallway.
That was when Rathmore’s voice cut through the mess of councilors like hot metal. “It’s the witch’s cat,” he bellowed. “It’s her familiar, which means the witch is here. Forget the cat—it’s a distraction.”
A wild white heat surged through me, adrenaline and fear, and with my enshroudment still wavering but intact, I glanced back for Loki, hoping he’d heard the door open.
He appeared from the throng with fishlike ease, slipping between legs and under the table and threading his way through the chairs to dash past my feet and through the doorway.
I didn’t wait. The moment he was out, so was I, allowing the door to fall shut behind me and to find a waiting Liara standing apart from the group of confused assistants, who were all staring at the door that had opened to reveal the room full of yelling councilors.
But no one had come out except a cat.
Thank god Ora Frostwish had disappeared to somewhere else in the building, or else she would have spied Loki right away.
Rathmore knows, I said into Liara’s head as Loki and I took off at a run down the hallway, back the way we’d come. He knows I’m here. Let’s get the hell out of here.
Liara didn’t answer; she just started running. Just as we hit the hallway’s junction and turned the corner, a strange, low sound echoed through the building, like a muted buzzing, followed by a wave of heaviness in the air.
And just like that, my enshroudment disappeared.
This was what Umbra had warned us about: the anti-magic security measures.
Liara grabbed my arm, stopping me from passing down the hallway of portraits. “We can’t go back the way we came. The building’s locked down, which means Delarosa’s office door will be locked.”
Footsteps sounded from behind us—lots of them—so with one exchanged glance, she and I did the only thing we could do: we followed the only other hallway available to us.
We passed doors and more portraits, and at the end was a great stained-glass window with a series of busts beneath it, and the closer we got to it, the more a single word repeated in my mind: No, no, no, no.
Because, from what I remembered of the building’s map, this seemed a lot like one of those dead-end hallways. And when we arrived at the busts, Loki and Liara and I stopped hard.
This was the dead goddamn end of it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Liara turned in a circle, kicked at one of the bust pedestals with her boot. “We’re trapped,” she whisper-hissed as the bust rocked in the wake of her sole before settling.
“We’re fine.” I stepped back to the wall and the ornate window, eyes darting. “Get behind one of these pedestals. They won’t see us.”
Liara stared at me like I wasn’t in my right mind, but she said nothing as she dropped down behind a pedestal.
I lowered behind one on the opposite side of the hallway with Loki beside me, and as three security guards with nightsticks at their hips strode by with nothing but a glance in down the length of our hallway, I began to think it might carry us through.
As long as I didn’t see Rathmore’s bodyguard again.
More footsteps neared. They were running. But if we crouched very still…
A fresh crop people rushed by, including a few of the councilors. When I peeked out, spotted Rathmore’s head and his long-legged stride, every part of me went still, and even Loki pressed soft and warm against my leg.
But Rathmore, too, passed on. Followed by his bodyguard, her purple veil appearing for a heady second and then disappearing—
And then reappearing.
She had backtracked, stopping at the dead-center of the hallway and staring down the length of it toward where we stood. She went stock still as though she was waiting for something. Or listening.
What the hell is she doing? Liara mouthed over at me.
I shook my head. She hadn’t noticed us—she was just looking for clues.
Rathmore’s bodyguard started toward us, her bootsteps nearing. Her pace wasn’t quick, but it was confident, as though she was following an invisible trail.
If she comes one step closer... Liara mouthed.
The bodyguard came to a halt a second later, just as Liara’s finger rose to point at her. And then I heard the bodyguard.
She knew.
Somehow, she knew.
We had to get out of here.
I pointed toward the window, then nodded back at the bodyguard. I hoped Liara would get the message.
And she did.
Liara rose and started forward. “You need to go back the way you came.”
The bodyguard didn’t answer. She moved with snakelike grace, her hand slid over the grip of the weapon at her hip. For the first time I noticed she sported one of those nightsticks, but this one was different than what the formalist officers wore. This one was longer, thinner, with silver etchings down the side.
I didn’t see the outcome; I turned toward the window, reaching up and pulling myself onto the sill. But as soon as I thrust my shoulder against it, I knew my body weight wasn’t gonna do the trick. The glass didn’t even tremor.
Behind me, something shattered.
“We’ve got a problem,” Liara called back.
When I glanced over my shoulder, one of the busts was broken on the floor by the bodyguard, clearly thrown by Liara and easily dodged. The two of them fell into a vicious hand-and-foot combat, throwing punches, kicks, each of them blocking the other. Except Liara had no weapon, and the bodyguard had her nightstick in one hand.
That thing could easily shatter Liara’s bones.
I dropped off the sill. Before me stood a bust of an old, smiling man, his eyes crinkling with a life well-lived. So he probably wouldn’t mind what I was about to do. Maybe he’d even laugh from wherever he was.
If there was a Hell, there had to be a Heaven, right?
I grabbed both sides of his marble face, hauling him up off the pedestal. “Loki,” I said, “when you hear the glass, climb up my cloak and hold on tight.”
Then I threw the bust right through the center of the stained-glass window. The thing was so interconnected that the bust didn’t just create a single hole; half of it shattered away all at once.
I climbed onto the pedestal, feeling the weight of Loki leaping onto my cloak and clawing his way up. My boot went out, and I kicked out the remaining glass, which clattered in beautiful shards on the street below.
It would be a long drop—ten, twelve feet—but it wouldn’t kill me. I hoped I’d get a little fae help.
“Liara,” I said over my shoulder, “time to go.”
I stepped onto the ledge, and in the moment I angled forward, Liara yelled out, her voice echoing through the hall. “Stop,” she called. “I can’t make it to you.”
Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t stop now. I was already falling toward the alley, my teeth gritted for impact. For a moment I was in freefall, the ground rising toward me, and I turned my face aside so my nose and teeth wouldn’t take the worst part of the impact.
But that didn’t happen. Hands grabbed my arms, pulling up, slowing my fall.
When I hit the ground, it was jarring; I dropped to one knee amidst the glass and nearly had to roll onto the shoulder Loki wasn’t on, but it wasn’t a bone-snapping impact.
Liara landed
over me, huffing. “I told you I couldn’t make it to you in time.”
“So you thought.” I took a second to reorient myself as Loki hopped to the street. “Wish you flew that fast all the time.”
She rolled her eyes, extended a hand. “Let’s go.”
When I took it, I couldn’t help but glance up at the shattered window. For some reason I’d expected to see Rathmore’s bodyguard staring down at us, but there was no one.
We escaped the city in my enshroudment, keeping to little-used alleys until we climbed up Arthur’s Seat. We didn’t speak until we passed through the veil to the leyline outside the academy, and then, finally, we allowed our shoulders to slump.
The walk back was slow. We didn’t rush. We’d gotten everything Umbra wanted and more.
The culmination. The hunt for Maeve Umbra. Falaichte—whatever that was.
As we passed through Umbra’s enchantment and onto the academy grounds, where it was still midday, I felt Liara’s attention on me. When my eyes focused on her, she pointed at my hand. “You’re bleeding.”
I lifted my arm, found a cut on my palm I hadn’t even remembered receiving. “From the glass.” Now that she’d pointed it out, it began to sting.
She shook her head. “That was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
“You’ve only known her a couple years,” Loki said as he trotted between us. “You missed the bulk of her adolescent idiocy.”
Liara’s eyes flicked between Loki and me. “Was your cat just meowing, or…?”
“Yep,” I said at once. “Just meowing, like cats do. Anyway, if you’re referring to the window-shattering maneuver, it seemed to work out all right for us.”
“I’m not,” she shot back. “I’m referring to jumping through the window.”
“Oh, that?” I shrugged. “You caught me before I died.”
“But I might not have.”
“But you did.” I raised my bloody hand in goodbye as we reached the center of the grounds. “Can you debrief Umbra? I have somewhere to be.”
She stopped, dismay on her face. “‘Somewhere’ better not be the dining hall.”
“We’ve all gotta eat, Youngblood.”
I knew that would piss her off. I also didn’t have time to care.
When I turned away, Loki followed close by my feet. He knew where I was headed; it was the obvious choice after everything we’d heard and seen in that room. “What did she smell like?” I said down to him.
Loki paused, as though he was recollecting the scent. He knew I was referring to the bodyguard. “It’s hard to recall. I didn’t get a great whiff of her.”
“Was it a regular human smell, or did she have magic?”
“She definitely had magic.”
I knew it. Only magic could repulse my enshroudment like she’d done in the council room. “So she’s a mage. An anti-magic mage.”
“But she carried a nightstick,” he said. “Like the rest of them.”
That was a mystery.
We had arrived at the library. When we passed through the circulation room, I nodded at Milonakis, who nodded back at me. We’d developed a certain unspoken way with each other after the ghost incident. We got along. Well, as long as I wasn’t breaking her strict code of rules.
She cleared her throat, and I stopped. Milonakis pointed at my hand. “You’re bloody.”
I nodded. “I won’t drip on your floor.”
She reached into the desk, pulled out a first-aid kit like a properly empathetic human, which made me suspicious. “Have you just returned from Edinburgh?” she asked.
I nodded again, approaching the desk as she opened up the kit, pulled out an antibiotic ointment and a bandaid. I had never encountered this Milonakis. “I shattered a window. An old, stained-glass one. Probably worth more to the city than capturing the fire witch.”
Milonakis’s eyes widened, then she extended her open palm for me to place my hand in. As she dabbed at the cut, she said, “So you made it inside the council room. You and Ms. Youngblood.”
“We did.”
Loki hopped up on the circulation desk, overseeing the treatment. “I was crucial, but she’ll never tell you that.”
I jerked my free thumb at Loki. “It’s very important to my familiar that you know he helped.”
Milonakis studied him above her spectacles, as if deciding whether or not to kick him off her desk. In the end, she went back to treating the cut. “You did more than I ever managed.” She dabbed on the ointment, and I kept my eyes on her, wondering. She probably knew the name of every book in this library, and the contents of at least half of them.
How had I never thought to come to her?
“Professor,” I said. “Have you ever heard of Falaichte?”
Her eyebrows rose, and she went still. Then her eyes lifted to me. “Yes. Why?”
“In the meeting, the councilors spoke of transferring prisoners to Falaichte.”
Her face lightened, a half-smile appearing. “Now you’ve gone too far.”
“Too far?”
“You’re pulling my old, atrophied leg.”
“Professor,” I said, “any other time you’d be right. But not this time.”
She went stiff, the smile vanishing like smoke. Her eyebrows drew together, and she placed the bandaid on my hand so harshly I thought she might reopen the cut. “You’ve taken this little ribbing too far, Ms. Cole.” Before I could ask her anything else, she pushed out her chair and walked from the circulation room into the library proper. As the door began to swing closed behind her, she popped her head back through. “Wait there.”
“Okay,” I said, hands raising as though I’d been apprehended. “We’re waiting.”
She was gone five minutes. When she returned, it was with a book that could only have been from the Room of the Ancients. And I wasn’t about to tell her she was breaking her own rules; not today.
She thudded it on the desk beside me, close enough that we were touching, and began flipping old, yellowed pages before I could even read the title. When she got to what she was looking for, her hand went to my shoulder, urging me in front of the book.
“Look,” she said. “Read here.”
I stared down at it. “It’s not in English.”
“Oh, for gods’ sake.” She pressed me aside, her finger traveling beneath a line of words as she summarized. “Falaichte Prison is part of an old Scottish folktale, which you’ve no doubt encountered to have recited the name to me. It isn’t real.”
“And why not?” I said.
Milonakis removed her spectacles, stabbed the page with one perilously pointed finger. “Because, Clementine Cole, the prison has no entrance and no exit.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The next day, it snowed. And in the evening, Eva and I sat on the edge of the meadow with a fire I’d lit in my palm hovering between us, watching a battle between the first-years and, well, everyone else. Even a few professors.
None of them knew what we knew about the Shade. And it was a strange comfort, to hear them laughing and screaming.
Eva rocked on the log beneath us. “Clem, that was us last year. In Novi Sad, remember?” I knew what she was doing: trying to bring me a little peace of mind, to rope me into the present with winter happiness and joy and make me stop fixating on the prison with no entrances or exits.
“Yeah,” I said, “except we were drunk. These people don’t have an excuse.”
“Anyway, Milonakis is right,” she said. “Falaichte isn’t real.”
“So was magic”—I twirled flame around my fingertip—”until I discovered it was.”
“All right,” she said, “so where is it, then?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I closed my fist around the flame, extinguishing it. “It’s out there. I just need to find out where.”
She eyed me. “You’re awfully stoic for someone who just found out the Shade is arriving within the year.”
I kept my face on the battle,
the flying snow, people’s faces lit by the moon. It was hard to explain why I had gotten used to the idea so quickly. It didn’t feel like as much of a surprise as it had to Liara, or to Eva, or to Aidan.
Maybe because I’d been watching all along. Or maybe because, for a decade now, I’d expected the worst from the world. This wasn’t the other shoe dropping—it was a steel-toed boot hitting the ground, and it finally felt like I could exhale.
The worst was confirmed. And now I knew exactly how long I had to kick that witch’s ass.
One year. I had one year—if that.
I turned to my best friend. “That’s because she’s not arriving, Eva. I’m going to stop her before she does.”
Her head tilted. “And what did Umbra have to say about it?”
“According to Liara, Umbra’s face took on a ‘grave, serious look when she found out, and she started drinking her tea faster.’”
“Is that all?”
“You have to understand,” Eva said. “When have you ever seen Umbra not savor her tea?”
“Point taken.”
Eva nodded, not even smiling. Which finally brought home what I’d suspected: this was a faster timeline than Umbra had expected.
“Eva,” I said, my eyes still on the flung snowballs, “I think things are going to move faster now.”
She clasped her mittened hands in her lap. “Yeah, Clem. I think they are.” Her face lifted toward the sky. “Come on. If we’re late to meet this mystery person, Umbra will turn us into newts.”
We stood, began walking toward the guardians’ tree, where I knew Loki had been sleeping in front of the fire for hours. “Can she do that?” I asked.
Eva smiled over at me. “Why do you think there are so very many newts in the world?”
I knew she was joking, but I did walk faster. “Nobody’s change-you-into-a-newt-for-lateness important.”
Eva let out a chuff, but said nothing more.
And when we arrived at the meeting room with the other guardians, I understood why: standing with her back to the circular table where we all sat was none other than her mother, Nissa Whitewillow. She and Umbra were in close discussion as we gathered at the table.
