He tried to pull his hand out of the water.
He could not.
The cold had closed around his wrist like a fist.
Not hurting.
Just holding.
Firm and patient and very, very strong.
And it was pulling.
Downward.
Gently.
The way a river pulls at your legs when you have waded in too far.
Scavenger, said Malakor.
His dry old voice was suddenly sharp.
Scavenger.
Pull back.
Now.
“I can’t.”
You can.
You always can.
You just don’t want to.
A pause.
You want to see it.
You want to know.
That’s the trap.
That’s always the trap.
Curiosity.
It’s killed more harvesters than knives.
Corin knew it was true.
He could feel it in himself.
A hunger.
A pull that matched the pull of the cold water exactly, from the other side.
Who wrote the note?
Who was waiting in the lane?
What happened?
Who did this?
He had come for the hiding place.
He had it.
He should go.
He did not go.
The gray closed over his head.
Tuesday, Before Dawn
It was dark.
Very dark.
The darkest part of the night, the dead hour before the dawn, when even the city is asleep.
Pell stood at the mouth of Gutter Lane.
He had been standing there for some time.
Corin could feel it in the body.
In the cold that had soaked through the thin gray coat, into the shoulders and down the back.
In the stiffness of the knees.
In the numbness of the toes inside the cracked brown boots.
He had come early.
He had wanted to see who came.
He had stood in a doorway across Needle Street, in the dark between two gemstone lamps, for most of an hour, watching.
Nobody had come.
Nobody had gone in.
Nobody had come out.
The Inkwell printing house stood beside the lane, black and silent.
The yellow light in Old Joss’s back window had gone out long ago.
The street was empty.
The cobbles shone wet and black under the cold blue lamps.
Somewhere far away, down by the river, a dog was barking, on and on, the same two notes.
The bells began.
Far off, across the city, in a dozen towers.
Not quite together.
A low, slow, iron sound, rolling over the rooftops.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Pell took a breath.
It shook in his chest.
He had made up his mind.
He had made it up on Friday, and again on Saturday, and again on Sunday, and every hour of Monday at his desk, copying Pike’s Ford, paid in part, Pike’s Ford, paid in part, with his hand shaking so badly that Grane had come down off his platform to see what was wrong with his letters.
He would go in.
He would listen.
He would not say where the book was.
Not until he had heard what the man had to say.
He felt in his waistcoat pocket.
Empty.
The stones were in the drawer.
The book was in the drawer.
The page was in the book.
He had nothing on him.
Nothing to take.
That made him feel braver.
A little.
He walked into Gutter Lane.
The Lane
Corin knew this lane.
He had walked down it a few hours ago, in daylight, with Toby behind him.
But it was a different lane now.
It was black.
Completely, utterly black.
The walls rose up on either side into nothing.
The thin strip of sky above was not gray, as it had been in the morning, but black too, with no moon and no stars, only a faint dull brownish glow from the lamps of the city reflected on the low clouds.
There was no light at all in the lane itself.
Not a candle.
Not a window.
Pell walked with one hand on the wall.
The brick was cold and wet and slimy under his fingers.
His feet slipped in the mud.
He could hear the trickle of waste ink running down the middle of the lane, a thin, steady, liquid sound, like someone pouring tea very slowly.
He could smell it.
Vinegar and blood and burned sugar.
He came to the first bend.
He went round it.
Blacker still.
He was afraid of the dark.
Corin felt it.
Not a big fear.
A small, old, childish one, the kind you think you grew out of, that waits at the bottom of you and comes back up when you are alone and cold and cannot see your own hand.
Pell had been afraid of the dark when he was little.
His gran had sat by his bed and sung to him until he slept.
He had not thought about that in years.
He started humming.
Under his breath.
Through his nose.
Very softly.
He did not decide to.
It just came.
His gran’s old song.
The fisherman and the moon.
The tune went up, and up, and hung there in the black, asking.
It helped.
A little.
He came to the second bend.
And round it, at the end of the lane, there was a light.
The Light at the End
It was not a lantern.
It was not a candle.
It was blue.
A cold, clear, steady blue, like the gemstone lamps, but smaller.
Much smaller.
A single point of it, no bigger than a fingernail, hanging in the dark at the end of the lane at about the height of a man’s chest.
No.
Not hanging.
Being held.
Worn.
As Pell’s eyes adjusted, he saw that it was not one light, but many.
Tiny ones.
A dozen.
Two dozen.
Strung together, in a curve, in a loop.
A necklace.
A necklace of tiny glass vials, each one no bigger than the tip of his little finger, each one glowing with its own soft blue light, hanging around the throat of someone standing very still at the end of Gutter Lane, beside the heap of rubbish, in the dark.
The light of the necklace was faint.
It lit almost nothing.
A pale throat.
The edge of a high fur collar.
The line of a long dark coat, falling straight to the ground.
That was all.
Above the throat, where a face should be, the darkness was complete.
And the smell.
It hit Pell like a wave, as soon as he came round the bend.
Sweet.
Heavy.
Thick.
So strong it was almost a taste.
Flowers.
A great mass of white flowers, waxy and pale, the kind that are banked around coffins in the High Quarter, the kind that make a whole room smell of death and perfume.
Lilies.
Pell stopped walking.
“Scribe Dorran,” said the figure in the dark.
It was a woman’s voice.
Low.
Soft.
Very calm.
A beautiful voice, smooth and rich, like warm honey poured over a cold stone.
The kind of voice that is used to being listened to.
It was not the voice of a man who signed his letters T.
“You’re not—” said Pell.
His own voice came out high and cracked.
“You’re not Lord Thorne.”
“No,” agreed the voice.
It sounded faintly amused.
“Lord Thorne is not well, I’m afraid.
He has not been well for some time.
He sends his regrets.” The tiny blue lights of the necklace moved, very slightly, as if the figure had tilted its head.
“You came alone.
Good.
You did not tell your friend with the spectacles.
Good.
You have been very sensible, Scribe Dorran.
Now be sensible one more time, and give it to me.”
Pell’s mouth was dry.
“Give you what?”
A small sigh in the darkness.
Patient.
Disappointed.
The sigh of a teacher whose favorite pupil has given a wrong answer.
“Please don’t,” said the voice.
“It’s late, and it’s cold, and this lane smells dreadful.
The red book.
The three stones.
And the page with your name on it.
Where are they?”
“I don’t have them.”
“I know you don’t have them.
I can see that you don’t have them.
You are standing there with your hands empty and your pockets flat and your heart going like a rabbit’s.” The voice was very gentle.
“I asked you where they are.”
Pell did not answer.
He took a step back.
Then another.
Toward the bend.
Toward the long black lane and the street at the end of it and the cold blue lamps.
His back hit something.
Something big.
Solid.
Warm.
It had not been there a moment before.
He had not heard it.
He had not heard anything at all.
A hand came down on his shoulder.
A huge hand, heavy as a sack of flour, with fingers like iron bars.
It closed.
Not hard.
Not yet.
Just enough.
“Mm,” said a voice behind him, very deep, very close to his ear.
A man’s voice.
Rough.
Bored.
It smelled of beer and onions.
“Going somewhere, little clerk?”
The Woman
The woman with the necklace of lights stepped forward.
One step.
Then another.
Slowly.
Unhurried.
The faint blue glow of the tiny vials came closer, swaying a little with each step, and as it came, it lit more of her.
Not much.
But more.
She was tall.
Taller than Pell, as tall as the big man behind him.
Slim.
Her long dark coat was cut close to her body and fell straight to the tops of her boots, and its high collar was edged with pale fur, silver-gray, soft as smoke.
Her hands were gloved in something dark and shining, like the skin of a seal.
And her face—
Her face was hidden.
Not by the dark.
By a mask.
A half-mask, of something white and smooth and faintly glistening, like the inside of a shell, that covered her face from her hairline to the tip of her nose.
Below it, he could see her mouth.
Red.
Smiling.
Above it, through the two almond-shaped holes in the white shell, he could see her eyes.
They were looking at him.
Calmly.
With interest.
The way a woman in a shop looks at a bolt of cloth, wondering if it is worth the price.
She raised one gloved hand.
In it, there was something small and silver.
A cup, Pell thought at first.
A small silver cup, shaped like a bell or a flower, with a short handle.
Then he saw that its inside was not smooth.
It was carved.
Lined with fine spiraling grooves, round and round and down into the bottom of the bowl, like the inside of a seashell.
“Last time,” said the woman pleasantly.
“Where?”
Pell looked at the little silver cup.
He was a Grade Three scribe.
He was not a mage.
He had never been a mage.
He had never had the money to buy the training, or the courage to burn his own mind for it.
But every scribe in the Ministry knew one spell.
Just one.
The smallest, simplest spell there was.
They taught it to you in your first week, so that you could light the lamp on your desk if it went out, without walking to the end of the room to fetch a taper.
A spark.
A tiny flash of light.
It cost almost nothing.
The taste of something.
The smell of something.
A scrap of a dream you had last Tuesday.
It was not a weapon.
It could not hurt anyone.
It could barely light a candle.
But it could be made bigger.
Every scribe knew that too.
Every scribe whispered it to every new scribe, in the corridors, on the boiler-room stairs.
If you put more in, it gets brighter.
Much brighter.
If you put in something big.
Pell looked at the woman with the silver cup.
At her red smiling mouth under the white shell mask.
And he understood, all at once, with a cold clear certainty, like the feeling of stepping off a step that is not there, that he was not going to walk out of Gutter Lane.
She was going to take it.
Whatever he did.
She was going to put that silver cup against his head and take everything he knew, every single thing, and find the drawer marked Q in the middle of it, and go and open it.
And Old Joss would be there.
Deaf old Joss, asleep in his nightshirt among the sleeping presses.
And Pell’s gran.
And Nan.
And the tree with the birds.
And the old people by the fire, whispering.
Oakhaven.
All of it.
In her cup.
No, thought Pell.
He did not think it bravely.
He thought it the way a small child thinks it, when someone tries to take away a toy.
No.
Mine.
And he reached inside himself for the biggest thing he had.
The Burn
Corin felt Pell reach.
And he felt what Pell reached for.
Not his gran.
Not Nan.
Not the tree with the birds.
Not the apple pies or the red kite or the warm boiler-room step.
Pell’s hand went past all of those, inside himself, the way your hand goes past everything else in a drawer to find the one thing you came for.
He reached for the week.
The last week.
All of it.
Every hour of it, from the first Monday, when Grane wore his brown waistcoat with the egg stain and Pell copied Mill Hollow, 9 households, 9 to Intake, to this very minute, standing in the black lane with a stranger’s hand on his shoulder.
The green ledger.
S.F.R.
The thick back cover.
The little knife.
The red book with the rose in thorns.
The three cold stones.
The torn gray page.
His own name.
The note with the red seal.
The burned paper on the boiler-room step.
The Inkwell.
Old Joss, speckled like an egg.
The type cabinet on the left wall.
The top corner.
Q.
Gothic.
36 point.
All of it.
Everything he had learned.
Everything she wanted.
He took it, all at once, in both hands, the way you would pick up a burning log to throw it out of a house.
And he burned it.
The Flash
It was not a spark.
The light came out of Pell’s chest, out of his open hands, out of his eyes, all at once.
White.
Not blue, like the lamps.
Not gold, like a fire.
White, pure and hard and blinding, the white of lightning, the white of the sun on snow.
It filled Gutter Lane from wall to wall and from the mud to the sky.
It lit every slimy black brick, every broken bottle, every dead rat and sodden scrap of paper, every drop of black ink in the trickle running down the middle of the lane, so bright that for one long instant they all seemed to have no color at all.
It made no sound.
But Corin felt it.
He felt it in the body he was wearing, a great hot rushing push that went out from the center of the chest in every direction, like a breath let out all at once.
The big man behind Pell shouted.
A wordless bellow of pain and surprise.
His huge hand jerked off Pell’s shoulder.
The woman in the white mask staggered back.
She threw up her arm across her eyes.
The little silver cup flew out of her gloved hand and tumbled away through the white light, end over end, glinting, and landed somewhere in the mud with a soft wet sound.
And for one heartbeat, two, three, Pell was free.
He ran.
He did not think.
He turned and ran, back toward the bend, back toward the black lane and the street and the cold blue lamps.
His boots slid in the mud.
His shoulder hit the wall.
He did not feel it.
He ran.
He got four steps.
Then the light went out.
It went out the way a candle goes out when you pinch it.
All at once.
And the dark came back, thicker and blacker than before, so thick after the white that Pell could see nothing at all.
Not his hands.
Not the wall.
Nothing.
Only floating purple shapes, swimming in front of his eyes, the shape of the light burned into them.
He stopped.
He could not help it.
He could not see where to put his feet.
And a huge hand closed around the back of his neck.
Empty-Handed
The big man was not bored anymore.
Corin could feel it in the grip.
Angry.
Hurt.
Squeezing.
He lifted Pell off his feet by the back of the neck, the way a man lifts a kitten, and carried him back down the lane, and threw him down on the heap of rubbish at the end.
Pell landed on his back on the broken crates and the rotting sacks.
The breath went out of him in a rush.
He lay there, gasping, with the purple shapes swimming in front of his eyes, looking up at nothing.
And slowly, the tiny blue lights of the necklace came back into the darkness above him.
Swaying.
Coming closer.
The woman knelt beside the heap.
Her red mouth under the white shell mask was not smiling anymore.
“That,” she said quietly, “was very foolish.”
She held up her hand.
She had found the silver cup again.
There was mud on it.
She wiped it, slowly, carefully, on the pale fur of her collar.
Then she laid it against Pell’s forehead.
It was cold.
So cold.
Colder than the rod in Corin’s hand, far away on the other side of the dark.
Cold like a mouth.
And it began to drink.
Corin felt it.
Every moment.
He would remember it for as long as he remembered anything, which was not, he knew, very long.
But for that time, he would remember.
It did not hurt.
That was the worst part.
It did not hurt at all.
It felt like falling asleep.
It felt like warm water draining slowly out of a bath, down a small dark hole, round and round.
Pell felt it go.
He felt things leaving him.
Sliding away, one after another, down into the cold silver cup, and gone.
The boiler-room step.
Warm brick against his back.
Gone.
Toby’s face, with crumbs on his chin, looking offended at a pigeon pie.
Gone.
The smell of the Copying Hall on a Friday, fish soup and old paper.
Gone.
The city.
The first time he saw it, at sixteen, from the top of the hill road, with his bag over his shoulder and his gran’s coins sewn into the lining of his coat.
The towers.
The smoke.
The thousands upon thousands of blue lights, like stars fallen into a valley.
Gone.
The village.
The hills.
A green slope, a stone bridge, a mill wheel turning.
Gone.
Nan.
Small and fierce, with her hair in a plait and her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she practiced her letters.
I am TWELVE.
Gone.
Gran.
Pell held on to Gran.
He held on to her as hard as he could.
Her face.
Her hands, brown and wrinkled, smelling of apples.
Her voice, by the bed, in the dark, singing.
The cold silver cup pulled.
Gently.
Patiently.
Gran’s face went.
Then her hands.
And then there was only her voice, singing, in the dark.
And then not even her voice.
Only the song.
The tune.
The fisherman and the moon.
Going up, and up, and hanging there, asking.
Pell hummed it.
He did not know he was humming.
He did not know what humming was anymore.
He did not know his own name.
But his throat knew the tune.
It had known the tune for twenty years, since before he could talk.
And it went on humming, by itself, very softly, through his nose, on the rubbish heap at the end of Gutter Lane, while the cold silver cup drank everything else.
Three notes.
The three that went up.
The three that asked the question.
The woman in the white mask lifted the cup away from his forehead.
The Tide Weighs It
She held the cup up in front of her face, close, and looked into it.
There was light in it now.
Pale blue-white.
Swirling slowly round and round the carved spiral grooves, like smoke in a glass.
A great deal of it.
A whole young life, poured into a cup no bigger than a child’s fist.
She looked at it for a long time.
And her red mouth, under the white mask, went thin and hard.
“Empty,” she said.
The big man shifted behind her.
“Eh?”
“Empty.
Of the one thing I wanted.” She tilted the cup, slowly, watching the light swirl.
“His childhood.
His family.
His little sister’s letters.
His whole life, here in my hand.” Her voice was very quiet and very cold.
“And not one hour of the last week.
Not one.
He burned it.
All of it.
The book, the stones, where he put them.
He burned it in that silly little flash, right in front of me, and threw it away.”
“Can’t you get it back?”
“Burned is burned.” She was still looking into the cup.
“You can’t drink smoke.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she said something else, very softly, almost to herself.
Pell did not understand it.
Pell did not understand anything anymore.
But his ears heard it, and somewhere, in the last small unburned corner of what was left of him, it was kept.
“The tide weighs it,” she murmured.
“And it comes up light.”
She screwed a small silver lid onto the cup.
She put it inside her long dark coat.
And from somewhere back up the lane, round the second bend, in the dark, came a sound.
Crack.
The sound of a boot treading on a bottle.
The woman’s head turned, sharply, like a cat’s.
The big man went still.
For a long moment, nobody moved.
Somewhere at the bend, in the black, someone was breathing.
Old, thin, frightened breathing.
Then the woman stood up.
“Finish it,” she said, without looking down.
“Make it look like a robbery.
Turn out his pockets.
Take his bag.
Hit him hard, where it will show.” She smoothed the pale fur of her collar with one gloved hand.
“And be quick.
We’ve been seen.”
“By who?”
“By nobody,” said the woman.
“By some poor old wretch who’ll never be believed.
But quick.”
She walked away up the lane.
Unhurried.
The tiny blue lights of her necklace swaying.
The smell of lilies drifting behind her like a scarf.
Pell lay on his back on the rubbish heap and looked up at the sky.
He did not know it was the sky.
He did not know what a sky was.
He only knew that it was there, up above him, a thin dark strip between two dark walls.
And that it was beginning, very slowly, at the very edge, to turn gray.
He was still humming.
Three notes.
Up, and up, and up.
He did not feel the club come down.
By then, his heart had already forgotten how to beat.