Page 93

I pushed past him. “I need your crucible cage,” I said, heading straight to his laboratory. The office door slammed behind me.

He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around. I spun away from him, but paused. My chest heaved with exertion.

I caught my reflection in one of Master Ostrum’s gleaming gold crucibles lined on the bookshelf.

Hair wild and unkempt, body dusted with white lice disinfectant, grimy dirt and soot streaking down my face. My eyes were wild and red-rimmed, my lips cracked with small spots of blood at each corner of my mouth. I looked down at my hands. My nails were jagged, caked in grime, the cuticles ripped. I didn’t remember the last time I changed clothes. The last time I bathed.

“I need your crucible cage,” I said. The voice reverberating throughout the office didn’t sound like my own. It sounded hoarse, cold, broken.

“What happened?” There was nothing but concern in Master Ostrum’s eyes, sincere worry at what I had become in the weeks since he’d seen me last.

What would Grey think if he saw me now?

It was with a numb heart that I realized I didn’t care. I didn’t care what Master Ostrum thought, what Grey would think. None of that mattered. None of it mattered at all.

“You’re right,” I told Master Ostrum. “The plague is necromantic. It will take a necromancer to stop it.”

Master Ostrum frowned, deep lines etched into his forehead. “I’ve thought that, too. But it will not be you.”

Didn’t he understand that it was already too late?

Clomping boots echoed throughout the hallway outside Master Ostrum’s office. He jerked around like an expectant dog on alert. “Go to the lab,” he ordered.

I went around his desk, stepping up into the lab. I closed the door behind me, but not all the way.

“Open up!” a loud voice called. “By order of the Emperor’s Guard!”

My hand clenched. I backed away from the door, deeper into the laboratory.

Master Ostrum hesitated.

The Emperor’s Guard pounded on the door again, and the glass window shattered, dozens of shards skittering across the floor. Master Ostrum cursed, reaching for the door as the guards stormed in.

I ran to the center of the laboratory, my fingers scrambling along the wooden planks, searching for the hidden panel. I opened it as silently as I could, although the shouting in Master Ostrum’s office would hopefully block any sound. I tossed my bag into the cool, earthen hole of the subbasement. It landed with a thud, and I bounded down the ladder, pausing only to slide the floor panel back into place.

“Don’t go in there!” Master Ostrum shouted as the laboratory door opened. There was a scuffle, a thud against the wall, books falling from the shelves.

Feet overhead.

The boots of the Emperor’s Guard thundered into the laboratory. There was hardly any light in the little subbasement, but I knew what was there. And what I wanted. As the guards searched the lab and Master Ostrum’s office, I rifled through the shelves, finding the small wooden box that housed the copper crucible.

Above me, an authoritative voice rang out. “Phillious Ostrum, you are under arrest.”

Master Ostrum sounded indignant. “On what charge?”

“On treasonous use of alchemy,” the master of the guard said.

The silence that followed felt thick and heavy.

“Say it,” Master Ostrum said in a disgusted voice. “Don’t be a coward.”

“You are under arrest for necromancy,” the master of the guard said, his voice cracking on the last word.

There was a scuffle then, and Master Ostrum shouted—far more loudly than was strictly necessary. “Be careful, you oaf!” His voice carried down toward me. “You’ve cut me. Now my blood is all over this table.”

“If you will not go willingly—”

“I’ll go, I’ll go,” Master Ostrum growled. “Try not to destroy any more of my lab.”