Chapter One
Kiela never thought the flames would reach the library. She was dimly aware that most of the other librarians had fled weeks ago, when the revolutionaries took the palace and defenestrated the emperor in a rather dramatic display. But surely they wouldn’t touch the library. After all, there werebookshere. Highly flammable, irreplaceable books.
The Great Library of Alyssium, with its soaring spires, stained-glass windows, and labyrinthine bookshelves, was the jewel of the Crescent Islands Empire. Its hallowed stacks were filled with centuries-old treatises, histories, studies, and (most importantly, in Kiela’s opinion) spellbooks. Only the elite, the crème de la crème of the scholars, were allowed to even view the spellbooks, as only the rarefied few were permitted, by imperial law, to use magic.
She was responsible for the spellbooks on the third floor, east wing. For the past eleven years, she’d worked, slept, ate, and lived between the shelves, which perhaps explained why, when she first smelled smoke, she thought she’d simply left toast on the cookplate.
Just to be on the safe side, earlier in the week, Kiela and her assistant Caz had begun securing some of her favorite tomes in crates and stowing them on one of the library boats, though she’d never truly believed evacuation would be necessary. Cocooned within the stacks, far away from any whiff of politics or violence, it was a pleasant game: if she were stranded on a deserted island, which books would she most want to have with her? CertainlyThe Grimoire on Plantwork,compiled in the year 357 by scholars Messembe and Cannin, as well asThe Manipulation of Weather Patterns, a Study of the Effects of Spellwork on the Breeding Habits of Eastern Puffins,which was a fascinating and groundbreaking work that—
Caz swung by his leaves into the aisle where she sat, cross-legged, in front of a pile of books. A spider plant, he was roughly the size of a farm dog but comprised entirely of greenery, with a knot of roots holding soil at his core. He was the smartest assistant she’d ever had, though also, perhaps not coincidentally, the most anxiety-prone. “We’re going to die,” he informed her, his leaves rustling so badly that it was challenging to pluck out the words.
“The fighting won’t come here,” Kiela said in the soothing voice she’d perfected after years of working in such a sacred space. She added another book to the pack-in-the-fifth-crate pile, then reconsidered and shifted it to the pack-only-if-it-fits pile.
He shook his leaves at her. “The fighting isalreadyhere. They’ve battered down the front door and are ransacking Kinney Hall.”
“Goodness!”
The door to Kinney Hall was a monstrosity built of brass and secured with bolts made of the sturdy lumber used for the ribs of ship hulls. She tried to calculate the amount of force required to batter down a thirty-foot door, then blinked. “Ransacking, did you say?”
She’d expected the rebels to secure the library and its treasures—that was only sensible—butransacking? These were freedom fighters, not feral animals. She wasn’t even opposed to their goals. On Caz’s recommendation, she’d read a few of their pamphlets in the early days of the revolution, and the call for elections and the sharing of knowledge seemed quite appealing . . .
“The North Reading Room is on fire,” Caz said. “They lit the tapestries first, and it spread to the scrolls.”
She felt sick. All those old manuscripts!
He tugged on her sleeve with a leaf. “Come on, Kiela, we have to leave.”
Leave? Now? But she hadn’t finished—
“If you make a leave-leaf joke,” Caz warned, “I’m going without you.”
She got to her feet. The fifth crate was only half-filled. Kiela dumped an armload of books into it without even checking what the titles were—“Enough, Kiela!”Caz said as she went for a second armload—and then maneuvered it toward the lift. On wheels, it scooted between the shelves, and she felt a lurch in her stomach as they passed all the full shelves of beautiful, wonderful books. She snagged a few more favorites as they hurried past.
Reaching the lift, she shoved the wheeled crate inside and yanked down the gate. Caz pushed the button with a leaf and turned the crank. The lift lurched and then descended.
As they traveled between the floors, Kiela heard the sound of metal clashing on metal, and her stomach flopped. She didn’t know firsthand what a battle sounded like, but shedidknow what a library was supposed to sound like, and all of this was terribly, horribly wrong. Caz crept closer to her, and she wished the lift would go faster.
What if it stopped on one of the floors with fighting?
What if it stopped altogether?
She pushed the sublevel button again and again, as if that would encourage it. The lift continued to inch downward with clanks and squeaks and whirrs. The stench of smoke grew stronger. Looking out through the grated gate, she saw haze shrouding the stacks.
“We should have taken the stairs,” Caz said.
“We’d have never been able to carry the books,” Kiela said.
“We won’t save any books if we’re dead.” He shook so hard that several of his leaves detached and floated to the floor. “Gah, I’m shedding!”
“You need to think about something else,” she said. “Oak trees are struck by lightning more often than any other tree. Apples can float because they are twenty-five percent air. You can count the number of cricket chirps per second to calculate the outside temperature.”
“Unless the outside is on fire,” Caz said. “How fast do they chirp if it’s all on fire?”
The lift lurched as it reached the lowest level. Kiela yanked the gate open while Caz maneuvered the crate with his tendrils. Shoving the crate outside, they exited the elevator.
This far down, water-level, she couldn’t hear the clang of metal or smell the stench of smoke. It was overwhelmed by the ripe fish odor of the canal that flowed beneath the library. All of the city of Alyssium was riddled with canals. It was part of what made it one of the world’s most beautiful cities, the jewel of the empire. Kiela remembered when she’d first arrived, very young, before her parents died, and how impressed she’d been by the sparkling canals, the lacelike white bridges, the spires, and the flowers that blossomed on every balcony, draped from every window, and framed every door. She wondered how much of the city she remembered was left.
Hurrying through the narrow stone passageway with the wheeled crate, she listened for any other movement. But all she heard was the slosh of water against stone and the drip-drip-drip of a leak somewhere nearby. Ahead were the boats.
