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And I realized: He wasn’t certain.

But he waseager.

Master Ostrum had spent his entire life with the secret of his family’s dark past. Now there was a hint of it rising up again, and his reaction was... excitement.

I tasted bile in the back of my throat. Master Ostrum and I had been studying the plague since my earliest days at Yugen, but he’d never been as passionate for the cure as he seemed fascinated now with the curse.

“You can’t be sure,” I said. “People are afraid of necromancy. And this knowledge—” I swept my arm to the tiny collection of books and items hidden in the subbasement. “Who else would know all this?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Master Ostrum said, shaking his head. “But someone else must... There are books. Necromancy is illegal, but learning about it... There are books. Rare tomes. Hidden in corners of libraries, forgotten, old books with old knowledge.”

The back of my heel touched the ladder leading back up to the lab. How long had Master Ostrum suspected necromancy? How much of our shared laboratory time had been wasted with him already knowing the answer?

Dilada flashed through my mind. Had he sent me to the factories, to the hospital, hoping I would eventually push myself that far, that deep into the arms of Death?

My stomach twisted.

“I have to go,” I said, one foot on the first rung.

“Nedra, wait,” Master Ostrum said. “I know this is a lot, but—”

I shook my head, climbing a few more steps up. “I have to go,” I repeated. “I have to... I have to think about this. I have to...” But I didn’t finish. I was already back up in the lab. I crossed the small room quickly, throwing open the door, running out of the building. I didn’t slow down until I reached the center of the quad, until Bennum Wellebourne’s iron-encased statue loomed over me.

THIRTY-FOUR

Grey

When nedra stoppedgoing to the hospital as often, my initial reaction was relief and hope that she would finally start taking care of herself. Instead, she went from treating patients to working day and night in the laboratory hall.

I joined her, helping where I could. “Did you and Master Ostrum have a breakthrough?” I asked, hoping this nightmare of a plague would soon be over.

“Maybe,” Nedra said slowly. “But I have to be absolutely, entirely sure.”

“Why aren’t you working in his lab?” I asked.

She opened her mouth to answer, then her brow furrowed into a frown. “It’s better this way,” she said finally.

Master Ostrum had blocked off a lab in the main hall just for Nedra. One wall held a row of cabinets that were all closed, many of them with locks. The other wall held a locker full of rats, each in its own cage.

“So what is this big theory of Master Ostrum’s?” I asked as Nedra pulled slides of samples from a box and lined them up with the microscope.

She bent over the microscope, analyzing the contents of the slide. But her eye wasn’t focused through the lens; her gaze kept drifting. She leaned back and pulled her bag closer to her. Through the opentop, I could see a book. Not a textbook—something old, the title worn away.

She sighed as if she were making a decision, one she wasn’t sure about in the least. Then she turned her full attention to me, staring at me intently. “Grey,” she said, “there’s been no cure for the plague. Nothing has worked.”

“But you have a theory?”

“We... we do.” She said the words like they were a confession, a sin to be absolved of. She opened the book in front of her.

“What’s that?”

“My papa says...” She paused. “‘A good book will give you answers to questions you didn’t know you had.’” She opened the book, the thin pages brown and dull under the bright light of the lab. “‘A great book will give you questions to answers you thought you knew.’”

Even the rats in the cages seemed to be listening to her.

“I don’t think I understand,” I said. My throat was tight; the way she was looking at me and speaking made this feel more momentous than a simple conversation. I felt like she was testing me.

I leaned over her to look at the text, but it was written in a florid font, difficult to discern.