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“I’m sorry, Havelock,” Valérie said. “Your throne might be made of twigs, but it’s still a throne.”

At that, His Majesty leapt lithely to the ground, and then, in a supreme display of malice, began to wash his face, as if he could not even be bothered to look at his enemy as he was destroyed. Havelock was still gazing at Valérie, brow furrowed and lips slightly parted. I wanted to shout a warning, but before I could, Valérie flung the glimmering pearls at Havelock, the incantation falling from her lips in sharp, precise syllables.

Abruptly, there came the sound of glass shattering and wooden beams exploding, the pearls shaping themselves into daggers that flitted through the air. I screamed and covered Élise with my body, then whirled around, half expecting to see Havelock on the floor, bleeding from a dozen mortal wounds. I say half expecting, because there was a part of me that didn’t believe he could be harmed—had I not seen him perform impossible feats of magic time and again?

I almost sobbed with relief when I looked up and found him still standing, although he was clutching his arm and staring at it as if it didn’t belong to him. Blood dripped down its length and fell from his fingertips to the floor—he had deflected most of the arrows, somehow, but one had found its mark and was burrowing upwards towards his heart. I thought I caught a glimpse of it sliding beneath his skin like a parasite.

Havelock shouted an incantation—it sounded garbled, but whatever it was, it was enough, and he wrenched the arrow from beneath his skin.

“Havelock!” I cried, but I didn’t see what happened next, for Élise dragged me back. I heard it, though: an explosion that shook the shop and caused a crater to appear in the rear wall—one of Valérie’s apprentices must have cast the incantation in the sword. The spiders were in a panic, scattering to hide themselves in corners and crevices so that it was abruptly difficult to see, the light flickering madly before it faded away. A small voice inside me noted numbly that I would have to give up on Oksana ever taking a shine to me now that we’d blasted a hole in her cellar.

To my astonishment, the next voice I heard, rising above the chaos, was His Majesty’s. The creature had let out a yowl I’d never heard from him before, and had fallen into a crouch, hissing and spitting. Banshee loomed over him, her back arched and her fangs bared. For a heartbeat, I didn’t even recognize her; I had never seen her even hiss before. His Majesty now had a tear in one ear, which was reddening with blood. I realized what had happened—His Majesty was almost at Havelock’s feet, and must have darted at him in an attempt to distract him and make an easier target for Valérie, perhaps by clawing at his ankles. Banshee now stood between Havelock and His Majesty, who was gazing at the smaller cat with disbelief.

Banshee lunged forward again, nearly getting her claws into His Majesty’s other ear. The big cat hissed, and then—I struggled to believe my eyes—turned tail and fled into the shadows.

“Banshee!” I shouted, but the creature ignored me completely and chased after His Majesty, her fur so fluffed she looked almost as large as the black-and-white cat.

I ran for the stairs, dragging Élise behind me. Nobody paid us any mind—no doubt they assumed I was fleeing out of terror, which was certainly part of it. I couldn’t do anything to help Havelock—and yet, if my theory was correct, I could save us all.

I glimpsed a flicker of uncanny emberlight from the corner of my eye, and I knew that Havelock had shed his human form and flown at the apprentices, or perhaps at Valérie. I hoped, with a viciousness that was quite unlike me, that he tore her to pieces, but I had a terrible suspicion that she had planned this attack too carefully to be caught by surprise. After all, it was clear that she knew her brother better than he knew her.

I felt an ache for him. I didn’t know if Valérie had once loved Havelock as a sister should and the Rivenwood had destroyed that love, or if she had always been this way at her core and he simply hadn’t wanted to see it—nor did I know which was worse.

Élise was shouting something, which I ignored. When at last we regained the main floor, the entire building shuddered and we fell against the wall—one of the enchantments had shaken the place to its foundations.

“Where are you going?” Élise shrieked as I dashed towards the oven. She planted her feet and tried to wrench me in the direction of the door and the relative safety of the street beyond. We tussled briefly, as if we were children again, but I had usually won our tussles, perhaps due to my broader shoulders, and managed to yank her off-balance.

“Agnes, what—”

“The oven!” I yelled, unable to be more articulate. I didn’t particularly want to bring Élise with me into this new peril, and yet leaving her behind felt equally dangerous.

“Have you lost your mind!” Élise yelled back, but I dragged her up and over the lip of the stone ledge nonetheless, and never was there greater evidence of her trust in me than the fact that she let me.

“Vortigern’s Artefact is in the oven,” I finally managed. “It’s directly above where Valérie was standing—she thought the compass was directing her to one of the lower floors, but it can’t be, Élise—I’ve catalogued all the Artefacts down there.”

I narrowed my eyes, searching. The oven was only high enough to stand in if I hunched over, and full of shadow. To my delight, one of the spiders had fallen into Élise’s hair, and it retained some of its illumination, though this seemed to be fading now that it had left the basement. I plucked it from her head—Élise screamed, batting at her hair—and held it aloft, cupped between my hands.

There! Against the south wall of the oven, I could just make out the imprint of Banshee’s body where she was wont to curl up in the ashes. Banshee, who was drawn to danger and loved the smell of magic, had claimed this, of all places, as her personal nest.

I couldn’t say it was my deductive skill that had enabled me to work it out, and it certainly wasn’t my knowledge of magic. No, it was Banshee. She’d led me to it—her quirks and habits, which I knew as well as my own, as I did those of all my cats.

I babbled all this to Élise, who was still yanking at her hair and moaning about spiders—neither of us was truly listening to the other.

“Havelock must have tried to burn it,” I said, setting the poor spider down—it staggered off as if drunk—so that I could feel along the edge of the oven, turning my hands black from the soot almost instantly. “If Vortigern enchanted it to make it appear useless—if her magic was greater than his—”

I broke off—my hand had snagged on something. I gave a cry of triumph as I pulled the book free.

It was a small thing, perhaps half the size of an ordinary book, clearly an antiquity but too well-preserved, at first glance, to be as old as any Artefact of Vortigern’s. The cover was badly singed but the rest was mostly intact. I flipped through it, but the pages were empty. No Property of the great magician Alice Vortigern written on the inside cover, nor any diary entries recounting eventful days of strolling through the Rivenwood or crafting any number of appallingly dangerous spells.

“The pastry,” I said wonderingly as another piece slid into place. “Havelock thought it was because of a Renaissance Artefact, but it was this all along. The magic has leaked into the oven, and every night it turns back time to when the baker was here. It’s ridiculous that it should do so every midnight, but old magic often behaves strangely, Havelock said. The rules warp. Then he is stealing Claude’s wares, just as Claude complained about—he’s doing it from the future!”

I tried to imagine how it might have happened. Had Havelock been thinking about Claude while he sat by the fire with the book in his hands? Was that how the spell worked? One had to think about the moment in time they wanted to return to?

I didn’t have to wonder which moment in time I should return to. I already knew, because Havelock had told me.

I spoke the incantation Havelock had taught me for releasing magic from its vessel, thinking hard about the date. Was that how it was supposed to work? When nothing happened, I spoke the date out loud.

Nothing.