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I sat in a chair in Milady’s tower. A chair, an actual real chair; House almost never provided those, not when one was young and fit (sort of) and perfectly capable of supporting oneself on one’s own two legs.

Which I wasn’t, entirely. Magickally speaking, I’d been scrambled like a jug of eggs, and the body objects to that sort of thing.

A week had drifted by since Farringale, and I’d experienced very little of it. I’d spent an unconscionable amount of time tucked up in bed, with a stuffed unicorn under my arm and a stack of cosy romance novels at my elbow.  I hadn’t spent an entire week at rest since I’d left university.

In that, as Jay so objectionably points out, I’m not so unlike my mother after all.

‘Welcome back, Ves,’ Milady had said, very kindly, when I’d taken my place in the hot seat.

She sounded okay. ‘Thanks?’ I said, my voice breaking a bit. I was nervous.

There was no sign of Mab, of course. Her ladyship consisted, once again, of a glitter in the air and a voice that came from everywhere at once. To hear her talk, you’d think her identity remained the darkest of secrets, known to none but the privileged few (emphatically not including me).

It was a pretence I could go along with.

‘Are you… well?’ said Milady, with a most unfamiliar note of uncertainty in her smooth, measured tones.

‘Mostly?’ I said, a question more than a statement.

‘You performed an astonishing feat of magick,’ said Milady, rather generously. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you are suffering some lingering effects.’

Lingering effects. Typical Milady understatement. I hadn’t been able to walk for three days. I still needed help to make it to the bathroom and back without folding like an ironing board. I kept crying for no reason whatsoever, and I’d flatly refused to be parted from my unicorn cuddly toy. It sat, even now, under my left arm, a soft, fluffy note of comfort in a world I couldn’t process anymore.

‘I—’ I began, and had to pause, take a shuddering breath. ‘I’m—dissatisfied with my performance.’ I managed to get all the syllables out before I dissolved into tears again.

‘And why is that?’ said Milady, still calm. Not the blaze of recrimination that I’d expected, but I was beyond the reach of reassurance at that point.

‘I—I—lost the magick of Merlin,’ I sobbed. ‘All of it. It’s still there in Farringale, down in the earth, and I don’t know how to—get it—back—’

Words failed me after that. Ophelia had been kind about it, on the whole, when I’d told her, but there had been in her face a look of such shock, such utter devastation…honestly, in future I’d rather have to admit to someone that I’d run over their beloved puppy. Or husband.

Milady waited in polite silence while I snivelled, mopped at my nose with a tissue, and—with a few inelegant, gulping breaths—contrived to pull myself together.

Then she said: ‘Ves. Why do you think Merlin’s magick still exists?’

I groped, frantically, for a vaguely intelligent answer, and came up with nothing. ‘I don’t know?’

The air sparkled: amusement, perhaps? ‘It is not merely for longevity’s sake. Those who commit their arts to the care of others—to the future—do so out of love. For magick, and all that magick can do. So. What did you do with this magick that was once Merlin’s?

‘You saved a kingdom. And not just any kingdom: one of the foremast magickal Enclaves in the country. Farringale will thrive, and it’s down, in large part, to you.

‘And it’s more than just that. You’ve proved that it can be done. In future, many more Farringales and Silvessens will be revived, and thrive. The decline of magick is over, Ves. That is the gift you’ve given to Britain—to the world—and I hope you will take pride in it, in time.’

I was crying too hard to reply. Honestly, it’s embarrassing. I haven’t cried half this much since I was six years old. Saving magickal kingdoms reverts a person to childhood, apparently. ‘Great?’ I managed, choking on a fresh wave of tears.

‘Their Majesties of Mandridore couldn’t be more thrilled,’ Milady offered, like a slightly perplexed adult hoping to bribe a sobbing child with a treat. ‘And your esteemed mother—well. Let’s just say that her unique talents are being put to excellent use.’

I could well imagine. Farringale as a hive of industry, speedily being put back together by my mother’s relentless energy and will. Hordes of talented people pulled in from kingdoms and enclaves across the country, united in their desire to drag the ancient troll capital out of the dustbin of history and into the glittering present.

Their Excellent Majesties, King Naldran and Queen Ysurra, had thus far expressed their appreciation for my efforts by way of gigantic bouquets of flowers displayed in every room I was likely to appear in (no fewer than six presently adorned my boudoir). I had received a personal letter of thanks, signed by both, and a vague but firm promise of nameless rewards to be bestowed in the future—I needed only ask.

And I appreciated it all, honestly. But whenever I thought about it, I couldn’t help but see Ophelia’s face, white with shock; her fumbling, devastated attempts to be nice about my casual sacrifice of the oldest magick in England.

Not that I had meant to. I hadn’t known what I was doing—which was typical of me, wasn’t it? Half-crazy Ves, winging it every step of the way. Well, once in a while the results were more devastating than I could ever imagine.

And—more marvellous.

‘Ves,’ said Milady, sensitive, as always, to some intangible sign of my turmoil. ‘I knew Merlin. And I think—I know—he would be proud of what you’ve done.’

I sucked in a shuddering breath, too appalled—and star-struck—to speak, at least for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’ I finally sobbed.

‘Entirely. It’s what he would have wanted.’

I was going to have a considerable cry about that, it seemed, and mercy was I tired of crying. I hoped my shattered nerves would think about recovering themselves pretty soon, or I’d—well, I don’t know. Check myself into a peaceful spa resort for the rest of my natural life, probably.

‘You made a nice tree,’ I said abruptly, apropos of nothing. ‘Fenella, I mean. Lovely.’

A pause; then Milady said, ‘You are wondering why I didn’t do that sooner.’

‘A bit.’

She took a while to reply. At length she said: ‘It is a question of…hope. That even the most…challenging of us might change, might grow. That I won’t have to forcibly deprive the Fenellas of this world of action and agency, because they can be trusted to manage themselves.’

I thought about that. Fenella wasn’t the only person I’d encountered who’d failed, again and again, to “manage themselves”, as Milady put it. ‘Do you regret it?’ I asked, rather daringly.

‘No,’ said Milady, but she hesitated as she said it, almost imperceptibly.

‘I don’t either,’ I agreed, with approximately as much certainty.

‘Get some rest, Ves,’ said Milady, after I’d palpably failed to summon words for a minute or two together. ‘There’s chocolate in the pot.’

***

There was, too. In fact there were three silver pots waiting upon the various desks and tables of my room, each ornately engraved and gently puffing steam. Pup lay curled up on my bed, blissfully asleep, and squeakily snoring.

Jay had awaited me outside the door to Milady’s tower-top room, and escorted me back down again once I’d been gently dismissed. He lent me his nice, strong arm, fussed over me flatteringly when I stumbled a bit on the steps, and thanked House very prettily when we found ourselves transported from the bottom of the stairs straight into my room without further difficulty.

Addie had made her personal displeasure with me very blatant indeed. I’d had to recruit Jay, Zareen and Indira to assist me with the steady delivery of freshly-fried chips for her personal delectation, otherwise I’m certain she would never forgive me for almost obliterating myself. It had taken thirty-three portions to date, and we were still trying.

The grove had been still less welcoming. Oh, not that it had rejected me, or anything so impolite. But I could wander about in it on two legs, now; nothing, it seemed, could restore me to my former status as a member of the herd.

Jay gently assisted me back into bed, and tucked my stuffed unicorn toy back under my arm. He was so very obliging as to plant a firm kiss on my forehead, too. He looked deep into my eyes, and said, with conviction, ‘You are wonderful, and everything is going to be all right.’

I captured one of his hands, and laced his fingers through mine. ‘Have you…’ I began.

He waited, and finally prompted, ‘Yes?’

‘Have you happened to run into Ornelle, lately?’

‘No. But I could.’

I dithered on the borders of confession, and finally broke. ‘I can’t change my hair.’

He glanced, briefly, at the mess of the hair in question, hastily combed with my fingers an hour before, and unchanged in hue since before Farringale. ‘That’s unacceptable,’ he said.

‘I was hoping—I could get my Curiosity back. The ring?’

‘I’ll get it back,’ he promised. ‘We can’t have you confined to a single colour for the rest of your days.’

I wrinkled my nose expressively. ‘Or obliged to—dye it. Do you know how revolting that stuff smells?’

‘I do, yes.’

I raised my brows.

‘Sisters,’ he explained.

I wondered which of Jay’s several sisters had undergone an experimental phase with her hair. Not Indira, anyway. ‘You’re the best,’ I declared sleepily.

Jay stroked my hair. ‘I know.’

Tears threatened again, but I was done with resenting them. I’d survived; I was alive, free to drown in the mess of my own emotions if I wanted to. For a while.

And we’d accomplished something nigh on impossible. We’d saved Farringale. Saved magick, rich and old and strange; the future, as far as I could see it, shone.

I opened my arms to Jay, a wordless request—and offer. A plea and a gift: affection, love, proffered and requested. Whatever the future might bring, I couldn’t imagine it without Jay beside me.

He didn’t hesitate. In another moment he was in my arms, the two of us as close as love could bring us. ‘What do you think we should do next?’ I murmured against his hair.

He smiled; I could feel the joy surge in him. ‘I don’t know,’ he murmured, ‘but it had better be something dazzling. I’ve developed high standards.’

I thought that over. ‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘Ply me with sufficient hot chocolate, and I can probably muster something at least a little bit dazzling.’

He did; and I did.

But that’s a story for another time.

‘What’s the plan,’ Jay whispered to me as we stood there, frozen with horror amidst the destruction of the great library of Farringale.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, already reaching with those other senses, hooking my mind and my heart into the landscape around me. ‘I think I’m about to wing it.’

If he replied, I didn’t hear it. My consciousness winged away from him, from Rob; away from the hideous spectacle of looters emptying those long-neglected shelves; brushed past Mauf, still asleep in my satchel—a mercy upon him; I left him undisturbed—past Baroness Tremayne, a distressed shadow haunting the scene, just out of sight or hearing; sank at last into the bones of the earth below.

Trees. I joined a tangle of their deep roots, a web running beneath the paved streets and stone houses, oak and ash and elm; we’d seen some few of them flanking the library, their heavy boughs still shading the deserted boulevards, long ages after those who had planted them had gone.

Something else lingered there: a memory, a ghost; trees-that-were, once; had ceased to grow, ceased to soak up the sunlight and rainfall of Farringale. The last of their sweet, spring leaves lay far behind them: hundreds of years had passed since they had last borne fruit, borne seed, let their green leaves turn the colour of amber and drift down into the slow death of autumn.

They had not forgotten. The memories lay locked inside every knot, every whorl, and I realised at last what it was I had encountered.

Shelves. The bookshelves of the library of Farringale had been built here, out of the siblings of those same trees that rose so proudly outside: and they were trees still, somewhere inside.

An idea unfurled in my own mind, like a leaf in spring: fresh and lovely and perfect. It was the work of a moment to touch those slumbering sparks with a thread of magick, to whisper to them of light, and fresh-fallen water. They responded, stretching themselves as they woke, reaching with fresh life and growth for the heavens.

And the leaves of Farringale—the thousands, hundreds of thousands, of bound and inked and printed pages, each one pressed from the mulch that had once, also, been a tree—these they carried with them, unfurling them like banners, opened to the sun.

I came back to myself slowly, through a greater exertion of effort than it had cost me to lose myself, for that little space of time. How simple, how easy, the life of a tree: the slow turning of the seasons around me, the crisp freshness of rainwater, the dulcet warmth of sunlight upon my upturned leaves…

In what stark, sharp contrast, the life of a Ves: hurry and haste, pain and turmoil, pressure and distress—I liked being a tree, could easily come to prefer it over any other shape—I fought to grasp the beauties of my little human life, the details: strong cups of tea in the morning, with lashings of milk; carrot cake, and Bakewell tarts; dance parties at midnight, when I couldn’t sleep—hugs, preferably from Jay; the velvety softness of Addie’s nose; the snap in Milady’s voice when I’d displeased her—

I flailed, halfway Ves and halfway tree, and then someone was shaking me, shouting my name in my ears and—

I had eyes again; I felt them; I opened them.

Jay, a vision of concerned fury. I was still a creature of heightened and layered senses, every pore tuned to the myriad cues of my environment. I felt every wave of Jay’s distress, felt it begin to ebb, when he saw me looking back at him.

‘We are really going to have to talk about this,’ he growled at me, his fingers digging into my shoulders where—I concluded—he had been shaking me.

‘Agreed,’ I breathed, gulping air. The ease with which I meld with landscapes, turn myself into boulders and bridges and chairs—it’s exhilarating, in the same way as a rollercoaster, the kind where you’re only mostly certain that you aren’t going to go hurtling off the rails at the next corner, and sail off into oblivion, screaming.

If I could only turn myself back with the same ease I wouldn’t mind it half so much.

‘Was I a tree?’ I whispered, half afraid of the answer.

‘Something like that—’ began Jay.

‘Ves,’ Rob broke in, and I tore my gaze away from my fascinated scrutiny of Jay’s expressions. ‘Was that you? I really hope that was you.’

He gestured, widely, and I beheld, with some awe, the fruits of my impromptu labours.

The library-as-was would, in all likelihood, never be the same again. The bookcases were gone, the very walls had shifted, and the roof gaped open to let the sky in; I wondered distantly what had become of the rafters, not to mention the roof tiles.

A forest had sprung up out of the earth. Chiefly oaks, these handsome trees: not so very old yet, their trunks still slight and lithe, but they were growing, thickening: changing, changing back, into the grand old trees they had been long ago, before men of Farringale had come with axes, and chopped them down.

A thick canopy shaded us from sun and wind: a rustling, green arbour, smelling of spring, and among those unfurling leaves there were: books.

I breathed out, a note of relief, for I had not, in my haste and carelessness, disassembled every book in the library, turning every separate page into roots and leaves. The books looked intact, as far as I could tell from some distance below: hanging from the branches like tempting fruits, far out of reach.

I watched as a quick-thinking looter jumped, reaching for a low-hanging tome; his hands never closed upon it, for the tree snatched it back, quick as lightning. The earth shook in palpable warning.

‘Yes, but before you ask,’ I informed Rob, and Jay, ‘No, I don’t have the slightest idea how I am going to get them down from there.’

‘Noted,’ said Jay.

‘But they seem to be safe, for the moment.’ So I fervently hoped; it was always possible that I had done as much damage to the books with my magick as the thieves had with their careless, grabbing hands, but I couldn’t think of that now. It was too late. I would have to hope that the love and fear I had laced into my magick had preserved them; the trees’ obvious protectiveness of their bookish burdens boded well.

Of course, I had been anything but subtle. Only some of the book thieves’ attention remained upon their prize, now hanging out of reach; others were raising the alarm, shouting questions at each other, beginning a search for the culprit. For me.

They wouldn’t find us: not yet, not while we remained tucked behind the echoes of space and time, swaddled in shadows and silence. But we couldn’t stay that way, and we had other objectives before we could hasten back to the Society.

I paused long enough to watch as several more energetic souls attempted various methods of retrieving the hanging books: jumping; boosting each other on cupped hands, or shoulders; climbing into the boughs of the trees themselves. All failed: the trees retaliated, swatting and swiping away the climbers, or shaking the looters out of their branches.

‘Right,’ said Jay, shaking himself out of his absorbed appreciation of the scene. ‘We need to find out what’s become of the regulators.’

The regulators, freshly ripped from Silvessen and—what? What were these people intending to do with them in Farringale? Whatever it was, I didn’t think they had yet deployed them. Surely there would be some sign already, some shift in the conditions of Farringale. Or would there? Could two regulators have much of an effect on an entire, magick-drowned city?

Someone passed by me, almost close enough to touch, and my train of thought shattered—I knew him, I was sure of it—shadowed as he was in my sight, his movements juddery and jerky, the strange effect of my disconnected state—even so—I followed him at a trot, noting his height, the breadth of his shoulders, the public schoolboy cut of his hair—

‘That’s George Mercer,’ I hissed, and stamped my foot in sheer rage. ‘Ancestria bloody Magicka.’

‘You’re certain?’ Jay called, following me.

‘Yes. I suppose he might have defected to some other soulless organisation devoted to the plunder of magickal heritage, but I doubt it.’

Jay seemed unsurprised, and so was I. Fenella sodding Beaumont: she just couldn’t go more than a month or two without kicking up fresh trouble.

Rob was hulking. It’s a squared-shoulders, chin-raised, threatening sort of posture he does when he’s contemplating destroying someone (to do him justice, he hardly ever actually does).

‘Now’s not the time,’ I told him. He’d have to step out from behind the echoes to actually lay hands—or Wands—on Mercer directly, and we were vastly outnumbered in here.

Rob gave me a terse nod, and his shoulders relaxed. ‘We’d better get a move on,’ he told me. ‘I may be wrong, but I think we have a surge coming on.’

I glanced at what was left of the library’s mullioned windows, forest-bound as they now were. I might have imagined it, but was that a slow flush of pale colour creeping across the glass? A soft, palpable hum of magick building in the air?

‘That seems—’ I began, but was unable to finish the sentence for the sheer sinking of my heart. It seemed like improbably prompt timing, but what if it wasn’t random? I had just unleashed a small tidal wave of magick in the great library. I’d turned the previously inert bookshelves into Merlin-trees, and now that I had occasion to think about it they were rather fizzy with magick—

‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed, exchanging one fraught glance with Jay. The same realisation was written all over his face.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he said reassuringly. ‘We’ve weathered these surges before.’

We had, but that was before I’d emerged from the fifth Britain in a state of dangerous magickal excess. Before I’d set eyes—or hands—on the strange old lyre from my mother’s Yllanfalen kingdom. Before I’d become a Merlin. No one could say what the effect would now be upon my shrinking self.

I had two choices. Wait and see—or run away.

I took a big breath, squared my shoulders, and hulked. ‘It’ll be okay,’ I echoed Jay, trying to sound like I meant it.

I could feel it now, pulsing through the floor under my shoes and thrumming in the air.

From the depths of my satchel, an irate voice began shouting. ‘Miss Vesper. Permit me to ask—with the utmost esteem and respect for your ordinarily unimpeachable judgement—what in the name of every conceivable god have you done to my LIBRARY.’

Mauf had woken up. And I saw his point fairly quickly, for quite apart from the unusual elevation of the formerly neat rows of books there was something else going on. They were—swaying. Their pages were fluttering, as though riffled by invisible fingers. As I watched, a cloud of butterflies erupted from the pages of one handsome old tome, and exploded in tiny flashes of light.

A discordant chorus of babbling voices rose in volume, rising with the magickal tide: the books of Farringale were gibbering, cackling, screaming in rage—

–And then, horror of horrors, the bright young oaks I’d conjured out of the bookshelves ripped their roots out of the earth and began to walk.

Whisht.

The sound broke in upon my reverie. Light splintered.

I woke up, partially.

I wasn’t Ves just then. I couldn’t have said what I had done with my eyes or my limbs or my fabulous hair, nor what shape I presently wore. I felt at ease with the landscape, as though I had grown there. Perhaps I had.

Cordelia Vesper, came the voice again, and I had regained enough of myself to recognise Baroness Tremayne’s tones.

How she perceived me in that state, I couldn’t imagine.

Baroness? I attempted to reply.

I sense you but I see nothing of you. How comes this about?

I mulled over how to answer that, when I had so little information myself. What had I done, exactly? What did I look like, just then? I’ll explain later, I decided, for time pressed, and I had no idea how long I had spent in my sunlit haze. Can you get Jay and Rob in, without their being seen? They’re waiting just outside the portal.

Cannot you?

Fair question, that. Since I had no real idea what I had done to myself, I had no real idea how to do the same to anyone else—nor even if it were possible. I was hoping you could take all of us into the echoes, I went on, ignoring that question too.

A moment.

A flash and a sickening shift; I felt wrenched out of the earth, like an uprooted tree.

Golden light dimmed to a pale, muted silver, and the soft sounds of the city—birdsong, the wind through ancient eaves, and, somewhere, voices—faded. I felt swaddled in mist, my senses muffled.

I had passed into the baroness’s strange world.

‘Ves,’ someone was calling, thin, distorted sounds, as though we hung suspended underwater. Jay. He was here somewhere.

I steadied myself with a breath or two, and looked about me. The baroness had moved me in distance as well as time; I stood in a white-walled room, small by troll standards. A single armchair rested, lonely, in a corner, besides which the chamber bore scant decoration: a plain stone mantel crowned a narrow fireplace; shelves built into the walls might once have held books; the bare boards of the floor might once have been covered with a cheerful rug. Perhaps I was in one of those modest merchant’s townhouses I’d seen on a prior visit. Shadows flickered oddly in the corners, light crackled and shifted; I blinked, shaking my head. I don’t know how Baroness Tremayne has contrived to live in this odd, mutable space for so many years. Perhaps she finds solidity disconcerting, now.

A door stood open opposite me, and in another moment Jay barrelled through it. ‘There you are,’ he said, with palpable relief.

My heart eased a notch at the sight of him. ‘Is Rob with you?’

He jerked his head in terse reply: behind him.

I couldn’t see the baroness, but this was her turf: she, of all of us, could be relied upon to handle it.

Her voice emanated out of nowhere even as I framed the thought, and I jumped. Art prepared?

Were we prepared. For what? Disasters innumerable and unnameable? Almost certain catastrophe? Slight, but not insignificant risk of actual death?

Eh, probably. I’ve got used to calling that “Tuesday”.

‘Art prepared,’ I answered firmly. ‘Ready for mission briefing.’

This puzzled the baroness; there was a palpable pause. I’d forgotten, for a moment, how she lived—giving new meaning to the term “out of touch”. ‘Occupation,’ she said after a moment, ‘seems centred around the library, though there are pockets of activity in other places.’

The library. Of course, the first thing these people had done upon invading Farringale was take control of the library.

Although… I frowned, rapidly revising my ideas. The first thing I would do upon invading a sovereign territory—however empty—would be to take over the library. But this wasn’t me. ‘Who are these people,’ I muttered, though I was beginning to develop an idea. If the library was their first, or even sole, objective, then they were a lot like us—only more ruthless.

‘Three guesses,’ said Jay.

‘Too generous,’ put in Rob.

I was beginning to agree. If I didn’t find Fenella Beaumont somewhere at the back of this mess, I might be eating a couple of hats.

I sighed. ‘Let’s go to the library, then,’ words I usually uttered with more genuine joy, it has to be said.

I braced myself against another sickening lurch through space and time, but nothing happened. ‘Tis but a short distance,’ the baroness told us. ‘This is the librarians’ quarters.’

I imagined a complex of dormitories, like a university campus, all housing the multitudinous librarians that must once have staffed the sprawling archives of Farringale: part of a bustling hive of intellectual activity, the likes of which the world may never have seen again. The shattering tragedy of its loss hit me afresh.

‘Oh,’ said Jay, realisation dawning, as I continued to stand there. ‘I’m up.’

‘Delighted as I generally am to lead,’ I confirmed, ‘I’m still me.’ Merlin or not, I still couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag without assistance.

Jay went to the door and passed out of the room, Rob motioning me to follow. He brought up the rear, guarding us, I supposed, from threats materialising behind us. Strange feeling; Farringale, as yet, seemed almost as empty as it had ever been, the only signs of other life hitherto being a faint babble of voices—and only then when I’d been merged with the land, Merlin-style. It felt almost like playing some kind of game; let’s pretend we’re on a quest to save a lost kingdom from a terrifying threat. I’ll be Merlin, you can be a Waymaster of indescribable power…

I followed Jay into a large vestibule, high of ceiling, with a pair of griffin statues flanking the tall door to the outside. Jay went straight out; I paused only to pat one of the statues on its smooth stone head as I passed. I couldn’t have said why. It seemed friendly.

The moment we stepped outside, all my comforting notions of make-believe fell into tatters.

Someone whisked past the librarian’s house, close enough to touch Jay: he halted abruptly. My heart stuttered; for an agonising moment I expected to be seen, to be caught; then the odd dimness of the noontide light, the shimmering, flickering haze over everything we saw, reminded me that we were undetectable. Hopefully.

We waited in brief, frozen silence, immobile—my mind spiralled back into childhood games and Granny’s Footsteps—a most inapposite desire to giggle rose in me, and I choked it down. The pressure was making me hysterical.

The person, whoever it was, passed by at a near-run, and it struck me that the hive of activity I’d been imagining moments before had returned to Farringale after all. If only they weren’t uninvited, irresponsible, and destructive—

‘This way,’ Jay whispered, stepping confidently out. I trailed after, heart pounding—it takes serious nerve to wander down a street, out in the open, and just trust that nobody will be able to see you.

Nobody did, but we saw plenty. Jay led us on a short, winding route around a cluster of stone-built houses—the rest of the librarians’ quarters, I supposed—and several people passed us, moving at considerable speed.

Now that we were closer, I was able to see that they were carrying armfuls of stuff. Books.

‘They’re stripping the library,’ I hissed, a surge of such rage swelling my heart that I couldn’t breathe.

‘I feel bound to point out that we did the same thing,’ Jay said. ‘Not that I mean to defend them, of course.’

‘We did not. We took several books, and only to save them. They’re taking—everything—’ I shut up, and breathed.

‘Maybe they’re saving them,’ Rob put in, but in a dry tone.

I scoffed audibly at that. ‘Of course they are. Zero personal interest involved.’

They were all human, these bustling thieves, which did not surprise me. Though the notable lack of any trolls did interest me a little: was that mere happenstance, or had these invaders known about the state of Farringale, known that any trolls they brought here would be in severe danger?

The existence of the ortherex; the fate of Farringale, and other Troll Enclaves; these things were not secrets, exactly. It had taken a huge, concerted effort to save some of the beleaguered Enclaves, involving the Society, the Troll Court, and other organisations; word of it must surely have spread.

Still. This was looking more and more like a carefully planned operation by somebody with considerable information. Someone who’d been paying close attention to what we had been doing this past year.

We turned a corner, and the library rose before us: a statuesque construct, a cathedral to knowledge, its gleaming white walls glittering with glass. Another person came barrelling out of the entrance as we watched and hurtled down the steps, a woman with soft brown hair, an armful of books, and a harried expression. They weren’t wasting any time: clearly they expected this incursion wouldn’t remain a secret for long.

Was this their only goal? Robbing the library?

Would that alone have rattled the unflappable baroness so?

Jay stealthed up the wide stone steps to the entrance, neatly evading further bandits dashing out with more books. I wondered where they were taking them, pictured trucks driven up to the gates of Farringale somewhere and filled up with stolen material. What a coup—if they could pull it off.

I smothered a rebellious corner of my soul that traitorously wished we had thought to come here with trucks and empty the library—there were reasons why we hadn’t, we had ethics and standards and we didn’t do this sort of thing, let it go, Ves—and followed Jay up the stairs.

Inside, chaos reigned.

On our last visit here, the library had been shrouded in dust and silence, like Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted tower. Spellbound, as though the city had fallen asleep, and might wake at any moment.

Now it bustled with the worst kind of activity. Easily twenty people were looting the shelves, hastily, haphazardly, scooping armloads of delicate tomes onto the floor and shoving them into boxes. Others merely grabbed eight or ten off the nearest shelf and ran for the door. I winced at the thud, thudding as more and more books fell off their shelves and landed in crashing heaps, sending waves of dust into the air.

Rage set my heart afire; I could have screamed my fury.

As much as I could understand the desire to loot every single page of precious knowledge out of the lost library of Farringale, I could never condone this—this—this travesty, this piracy. Nobody cared if the books were damaged during this shambles of a process; nor did they care that the right of ownership over them was emphatically not theirs.

They weren’t emptying the great library of Farringale; they were destroying it.

My feelings were echoed in Jay and Rob, for the three of us stood frozen in shared horror for some minutes. It defied belief, that anybody with a value for knowledge could treat the place with such a total lack of respect—how could they—

‘Right,’ I said, crisply, and the syllable contained worlds of steely resolution.

‘Right,’ Jay agreed, grim as death.

Rob merely nodded. We were agreed. Whatever it took, we were stopping these people.

But we were here on reconnaissance only. We didn’t have the numbers to mount a counter offensive, and it would take days to muster that kind of a force and get it all the way down here (we had only the one Waymaster, and there was no conceivable way Jay could be expected to cart a hundred Society members across such a distance).

By the haste with which these thieves were working, they knew this. They weren’t planning to be here in a few days’ time; they were getting the goods and getting out. By the time reinforcements arrived, it would be too late—at least for the library.

If there was ever a good time to go catastrophically, devastatingly Merlin on somebody, this was it.