Cold Magic

He and his servant went on, leaving us behind just as we’d hoped.



“We have to get back in and find it.” Bee used the tone of voice that, like a stake, always impaled me to the wall.



“Both the headmaster’s office and the formal library are specifically off-limits to unchaperoned pupils. We already know that the headmaster’s dog is roaming loose among the books.” I rose. With my height, I towered over her. “Can you imagine what will happen if we’re caught in either place?”



“I’ll go alone.” She pressed her left hand to her bosom but fixed her right around the door’s handle and misquoted the famous words of the great general Hanniba’al: “ ‘I will either find a way, or make one.’ ”



“Very pretty,” I muttered. “Too bad the even more decorative Maester Amadou is not here to admire your fetching pose. Only, you should have your right hand raised in the manner of an orator declaiming.”



She looked at me, all honey. “It’s not locked.”



I could smell luncheon’s distant promise. I was so hungry. But there was no one in the corridor. Either find a way, or make one.



“It will be on your head,” I muttered.



I adjusted my schoolbag’s strap so it wouldn’t shift. Then I bent to listen at the keyhole, hearing no sound from the chamber beyond except the ticking of the clock like the swing of fortune: triumph, disaster, triumph, disaster. I lifted a hand, she turned the handle, and we slipped inside. She closed the door and let the handle rise with a faint snick. The chamber lay eerily empty. The poet’s head looked merely like a remarkably lifelike carving. Even so, I kept thinking its eyes were about to pop open and spot us sneaking where we weren’t allowed. We slid quietly across the polished floor—many years of fencing practice had honed our ability to move smoothly—and at the far door, I again listened at the keyhole.



At first hearing: nothing.



I shut my eyes and listened more deeply, letting my cat’s hearing creep through the unseen room on the other side of the door to the shift of air and temperature that betrayed a larger chamber beyond, in which one male voice asked a curt question and another replied in a cramped monotone I was sure belonged to the headmaster’s dog. I could not quite hear distinct words: a map of Adurnam? The Rail Yard? Gas?



Was everyone in the academy discussing the newly arrived airship?



There was no point in waiting. We must be as bold as the didos of our people, the queens who had founded cities, battled the Romans to a standstill, and commanded voyages of discovery across the Atlantic Ocean and around the horn of Africa. I nudged Bee’s foot with my own. She slid the door open a crack, wedged a foot in, peered inside. Like lightning, she flashed through the gap and vanished. I slipped after her, and she shut the door behind us.



Fiery Shemesh!



We stood in a chilly chamber of aisles, alleys of shelves that reached floor to ceiling, all crammed with books of every height, width, and thickness, some old and others new, more books than I had seen in one place in my life: This was a storage library. The polished wood floor caught streaks of light from the courtyard windows rising to our left, but mostly the light was broken up by the high shelves. We stared straight down a central aisle lined with pillars, each of which marked a side alley of shelves running perpendicular to the shadowed edges of the room. At the other end of the space, one side of a double door had been propped open against a stack of books so new their leather bindings gleamed. The vast formal library beyond had a vaulted ceiling and ample sunlight.



A man spoke, a brusque request for “that document you mentioned.” Although we could not see him, I heard, almost felt, his feet shifting on the floorboards. Another pair of feet clip-clapped toward the open door.



I yanked Bee into the shadows to our right. We shivered like mice while the headmaster’s dog walked briskly down the central aisle and into the headmaster’s office. Its door closed behind him. We darted along the back aisle to the other end of the room. Creeping, we ventured up this alley, books leering at us from either side, to the door that opened into the library hall. From this angle, we could get a look only into the left-hand sweep of the huge chamber.



Five towering windows took up most of the outer wall facing the rose court, running from cushioned window seats all the way up to the crown moldings that joined wall to high ceiling. Long, heavy curtains of a dutiful gold fabric swagged down on either side of each window, tied back by braided gold cords. I nudged Bee and pointed to the gathered drapes. She nodded.



We crept to the left until we could see the rest of the chamber. The inner three walls were lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves. A rolling book ladder rested beside the far doors. In the half of the chamber nearest us, settees and side tables were arranged in handsome groupings flanked by braziers to allow scholars to read and converse in comfort. On the far half of the chamber, three long tables were set crosswise so as to take advantage of the full length of the natural light streaming in through the tall windows. Oil lamps rested by tables and couches to provide light in the evenings. None were lit now. Even the massive fireplace lay cold, despite the chill.