I heard movement and then the sound of someone leaning against their own metal door, right next to me. If I pressed my face right against the bars, so that my nose poked through, I could just make out knobby knuckles clasped about the bars of the next door and the very tip of a nose.
“I can’t believe you’re alive!” I cried. “I saw the fingernails … the blood …”
“Ah yes,” he said cheerfully. “It was rather painful at the time.”
“I was sure someone had killed you!”
“Well, they were more than willing to, but fortunately, I am not as defenseless as they imagined.”
“What happened? What …” I tried to gather my thoughts. “Why are youhere?”
“Temple guards came to the shop looking for you. There was an … altercation. I did not reveal your whereabouts, but I was overpowered, and taken. They set fire to the bookshop. I thought for certain that they would have found you sooner, and I am very glad they did not—although,” he added heavily, “it seems your luck may have come to an end. How didyouend up here?”
“I went with Milady,” I said, leaning my forehead against the cool metal. “I shouldn’t have. But she told me …” I trailed off. “I was stupid. She wanted to marry me off to her own lover.”
“Good heavens,” said the Book Man, sounding quite scandalized.
“And he wanted to siphon my power, somehow.”
“Ah yes, I have heard tell of mages who can do that.”
“I got away from them, with my friends …” I faltered. “Perhaps not my friends. They wanted something from me, too.”
“I am so sorry,” he said gently. “But I am very glad to see you again, even under these circumstances.”
“Book Man, did you know that Milady is my aunt?”
A heavy silence. Then, “I suspected.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He sighed. “At first, I wasn’t sure. You resemble your mother—oh, so much. But I wasn’t sure.”
“You knew my mother?” I whispered.
“She was my apprentice, my dear. Came to me much as you did, in a panic, fleeing pursuers. With a baby in her arms.”
My breath caught.
“You were so very small,” he said. “I doubt you will remember this, but I used to dandle you on my knee while I worked on repairs. You loved the colored threads.”
The odd familiarity of the bookshop that had felt almost like a dream.
“When did you know for sure? That it was me?”
“As I said, I suspected. The resemblance. Your Hair. The clear power you possess. But when I saw what you did to the spellbook—not just repairing or enhancing it, but rewriting it to be better, stronger … It was absolutely remarkable. Something I had never imagined could exist.”
“How long were we there?” I asked softly.
“Your mother worked with me for about six months, I think. She was brilliant. Ambitious, obsessive … fascinated with bone magic. As was I, at that time. I believed the only way to reclaim the freedom of magic, and the freedom of its practice, was to tear down everything the Temple had built. Including the restrictions they had placed on bone magic. Your mother, though … I thought she had the same goals as me, but hers were more … personal. She did not want to free the practice of bone magic for general use, but rather to be its only wielder. I don’t think I allowed myself to see that, at first. I was very fond of her—and you. She was quite like a daughter to me, and you a grandchild.”
I heard him sigh again. “We argued,” he said. “I thought we would speak again in the morning, that everything would be all right. But she took all her notes, all my volumes on bone magic, and left in the middle of the night. With you. Every remaining piece of research relating to bone magic, every theory, every draft of a spell.”
“She kept going,” I said. “She found the secret she waslooking for. She locked it inside her great spellbook. And then she sold it to the Temple.”
“The Temple!” he exclaimed.
I told him everything I had learned from the Pontiff.
