Abel seems to crumple at the mention of his daughter’s name.
‘Alice, if the Guardians come looking—’
‘Then they’ll find nothing more than two childless parents caring for a parentless child.’ Alice reaches out her arms to Ursa. ‘Give her to me, dear.’
I fight down a sob as the weight of the sleeping bundle is lifted from my arms.
‘Vivien, going against the law is more dangerous than I think you realise.’ Abel’s blue eyes stare into my own. ‘OurSophie—’ He pauses, a hand clutching the doorframe. ‘Sophie tried to come home several times after she was demoted. The Guardians would escort her back to Camden, to her Third Class quarter, but she always returned. And we let her. Alice … Alice even tried to hide her. And now she’s gone.’
My chest tightens. ‘What do you mean she’s gone? Gone where?’
‘The council told us she moved to another quarter for work, but she never wrote to us. Shewouldwrite to us if that were true. Wouldn’t she?’
He’s looking at me as if I might know what Sophie is thinking, or at least where she is. All I can do is nod. Sophie would never abandon her family.
‘Now don’t you go disappearing, too,’ Alice says to me, her eyes shining with tears.
I hand Ursa’s bag to Abel, and Mina lets out a hiss. ‘The cat …’ I mutter apologetically. ‘Ursa’s class pass is round her neck. I’ll be back for her, I promise.’
Alice nods, tucking the blanket round Ursa as she turns away. I begin to cry as the little golden head disappears into the house. Abel waits patiently for me to compose myself, and I’m suddenly aware of how much time has passed since I was last inside this house. The memories threaten to overflow, each of them now stained with shame. Sophie’s bedroom window fills with light and I know I need to leave. Alice has taken Ursa without a second thought. Would she have done so if she knew Sophie was missing because of me? If she knew how I tore her family apart?
‘Be careful, Vivien,’ Abel says.
I nod before slipping back down the pathway and on to the street, pulling the strap of my satchel across my body. I have a long night ahead. I need a dragon, a dragon with a motive.
Luckily for me, I know exactly where to find one.
THE LIBRARY IS LOCATED IN the University of London’s north tower. Every doorway and window is shrouded in shadow and the grand iron gates stand tall and imposing in the darkness. But I know they’re just for show. I slip silently over the wall, my leather shoes sinking softly into the grass. The tower’s oak doors are bolted closed so I creep round the side of the building to a small window illuminated by a streetlamp. I run a finger along the edges of the windowpane. Dad’s penknife is cold and heavy in my pocket. I flick it open and place the tip in the groove between the window frame and the glass.
I’ve seen Dad do this before, when Ursa locked herself in the garden shed in protest against starting school. He lifted her out and explained to her that an education would ensure her a good profession that would allow her to stay with the family forever.
The resistance softens as the blade meets the rubber and I begin to cut, dragging the knife down and round the paneof glass. Dad is gentler with Ursa than he used to be with me. I was six when I exchanged my class pass with Vera Malloy from the Third Class quarter across the square. We did it as a joke, but it wasn’t funny when a Guardian motorcar pulled up and Vera fled, my pass still round her neck.
The Guardian demanded to know what I, Vera Malloy, was doing in a Second Class quarter without an authorisation badge. My entire body went cold with dread, but instead of arresting me the Guardian walked me to Vera’s quarter and left me in a street I didn’t know. So I screamed at him in Wyrmerian, and then in several other dragon tongues, asking how I could speak so many if I attended a Third Class school?
Your languages saved you, Vivien, and they’ll save you again, Dad told me.
But he forbade me from playing out in the street after that.
The pane of glass wobbles as I dig my blade beneath it, then comes free. I set it gently on the ground, stick my hand through the gap and lift the handle on the inside. The window swings open and I heave myself through, scuffing my shoes on the wall in the process. In all my childhood fantasies about the University of London, I never pictured myself breaking into it.
I’m standing behind the receptionist’s desk in a small, book-lined nook of the library. I edge my way through the dark, across the worn floorboards to the entrance hall until I find the lift, then step in and close the cage doors. I pull the crank all the way to the left. As the lift begins to rise, I catch flashes of the different floors through the tiny window.It stops with a shudder at the top and I exit at the bottom of the spiral staircase. I’ve been up here once before, as a dare.
Bet you don’t have it in you to go and see that dragon for yourself, Marquis had said.
I had climbed the staircase into the dragon’s prison, revelling in my cousin’s dismay, before darting back down. Just to prove that I could. Now, with my hand skimming the curved bannister, I climb again.
A breeze chills the air and I shiver as I step into the circular room. My eyes dart immediately to the line of bookcases I saw the dragon sprawled across last time, seeking out its shape in the light of the moon. But there’s nothing there. A set of steps lead up on to a balcony that allows access to the highest bookshelves. I wonder what sort of books they hold – they can’t be of much importance if they’ve been left up here.
A sweet, rotting smell turns my stomach. I take a step forward and something crunches underfoot. It’s the white skull of a small mammal, a cat perhaps. It must have wandered up here in search of mice only to meet its own gory end. Either that or the maintenance workers have started feeding their pets to the dragon.
Anticipation rises in my stomach. Ihaveto do this. I have no other choice. The thought makes me feel braver. But where is the dragon?
I walk through the archway ahead. It leads into a second room, larger than the first. I step on to the carpet and it crackles beneath my shoes. It’s not a carpet at all. It’s a huge shed dragon skin, pale and papery. To the right is an abandoned desk splattered in bird droppings and to the left a faded sign.
KNOWLEDGE REQUESTS, it reads.
Older students have told me that the library dragon is a criminal who rebelled against the creation of the Peace Agreement because it refused to be governed by human laws. So it was sent here to serve humans – the worst punishment that could be inflicted on its kind. Its sentence was to provide the scholars with relevant knowledge or history. After all, a creature that has lived for centuries is a hundred times more informative than any book. But the decision backfired when the dragon almost killed a student. I suppose that now it will simply be left here until it dies.
