Page 43

“I think you’re lying.”

For a while she doesn’t know if he’s going to answer. Then, he almost coughs out, “I think I hurt my family: my uncle, his wife.”

And he looks so miserable and so young that her heart gives a squeak of sympathy, something she was sure had been drained altogether these past years.

“I…know I did.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Look, we need to go.”

He nods. “There’ll be soldiers coming soon enough. Looking for me.”

Millie stares at him with bitter amusement, sympathy draining away.

“Do you really think so? Because when my family was slaughtered, no one came to our aid, and no one delivered justice. Your uncle simply walked in and took over, didn’t even change the livery on the household servants, declared you his heir, took a fresh wife from the pile of noble houses waiting for their chance.

” She laughs. “We need to go so I can find an answer before someone replaces your uncle the way he replaced my father.”

“Your father? You’re her? The Lost One.” He stares. “You know my uncle had you written out of the records? Because you couldn’t be found, he decided the best thing to do was erase you.”

Millie hadn’t known that. Why would she?

Did it matter? When she could barely recall the name she’d been born with?

When she was so thoroughly Millicent Broad, owner of The Bureau?

Or rather, of a burning business? A pile of ash?

To gain herself a moment, she turns her head, lifts her hair and shows him the scar where Faustus put a burning brand to sear away the tattoo.

Over the years something had happened, as if he’d burned it into the skin, though these days it was pale, like a raised cicatrice.

They should get moving, but she’s got questions and they’re demanding attention. “So now you know. Now you can get rid of me.”

“I wouldn’t! I’d never…I only became crown prince because my uncle has no sons.

I was quite happy on my parents’ farm – oh, they call it an estate, but if the livestock wander into the kitchen on a daily basis, it’s a farm.

” He throws his hands up. “The moment his latest consort delivers a boy, I’ll be finished.

The best I can hope for is being castrated and sent to service in the archival holds.

Or the best I could have hoped for before…

” He narrows his eyes. “Wait. How did you know about the book, how it starts? That’s a very specific piece of knowledge… ”

Millie blinks hard. “Because when I was five, I found such a gift, too.”

His eyes widen in understanding of what goes unsaid.

She changes the subject. “When the spell activates, that version of the book’s destroyed, the demon takes a host. When the deed is done, the demon disappears. Yours is gone now.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods. “Whatever you – it – asked Pandora to do? There were enchantments and wards laid over The Bureau by the original owners that won’t allow certain things to happen.

And Pandora…poor stupid girl. She was consumed by the reaction – the demon jumping to her, a better and more powerful vessel with all the medium magic in her, precisely the sort of thing that’s not allowed.

It threw you out of the loop in doing so – and then the wards were lit up. ”

“But someone still sent me San’t Marten’s Book of Mild Melancholy .”

“Not something done lightly or accidentally, unless you’re very stupid.” She pauses. “But why did you come to The Bureau?”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t me. An imperative.”

“Huh. Interesting,” she says. “An order folded into the demon folded into the book. I think it wanted me, but it went with Pandora when offered. Curious. Not a very targeted thing, then. Not a skilled practitioner, just someone who knew enough to do damage.”

“So…?”

“So, we should get out of here before someone sees us anywhere near this awfully large and destructive fire and all the damaged property.” She begins to crawl across the soft, unstable surface.

“Oh, and let’s avoid any patrols – if they find us, they’ll just put you on the throne and it’ll take ages to sort this out. ”

***

She steals a cloak hanging from a washing line somewhere in the mean streets – he’s already got one – and makes a mental note to come back and replace it when she can, or leave coins on the doorstep at a later date.

They wander the streets, hooded like assassins, ducking in and out of the mouths of alleys, bolting across brightly lit streets, doing their best to stick to the deeper darkness wherever they can.

They manage to avoid the patrols and firemen, shouting, hauling buckets of water in the direction of the blaze.

Millie hopes hard that the fire’s contained, for everyone’s sake.

Almost at their destination, however, a band of heavily armed guardsmen round the corner, catching the pair passing beneath an unavoidable streetlamp.

Millie pushes the prince against a wall without thought, brings her face close to his, hisses, “Hush.”

He murmurs “Well, this is familiar” and pulls her into a kiss before she can snarl at him.

The guardsmen are well and truly gone by the time Millie comes up for air.

She didn’t even hear – or hardly heard – the coarse comments about joy-walkers and their clientele, exhortations to take a room somewhere, and requests to be next in line.

The prince doesn’t seem to want to let her go and she’d admit, if anyone had the breath to ask, that she feels the same.

But there’s a problem to solve, so she puts a hand flat on his chest (doesn’t quite manage to make herself push him away, just pats the muscles there), and sighs. “Later.”

He moans and nods reluctantly.

***

When Millie at last knocks on the copper-banded door inside the Inn of the Painted Face, Faustus takes even longer to answer than before and she wonders if either he suspects it’s her again and is waiting for her to leave, or if he’s gone altogether.

If he’d heard the explosion, or news of the fire, and in a fit of caring has run through the streets to see if she’s safe; or in a fit of terror has left the city at long last. When he does finally appear, his eyes go terribly wide in disbelief.

She pushes her way inside, dragging the crown prince behind her.

Faustus looks doubly surprised when he sees the young man.

“Did you hear?” asks Millie.

“What?”

“The explosion.”

“Uh. No. Nothing.”

Millie can tell he’s lying. She tilts her head, stares. For a moment it’s like he struggles to select a train of thought, then seems to give up, shrugs. “Honestly, I didn’t think you’d survive. You’re like a rat or a cockroach.”

It feels like a slap, even though there’s never been any gentleness from him over the years. But he had saved her, and she’d always thought it meant something , some rough kind of caring.

“But you rescued me,” she says dumbly, as if the betrayal cannot be believed.

“I’ll admit it was irritating, to find you alive, but it’s worked out. An insurance policy, small and portable. A source of income when needed. And now you’ve conveniently delivered my next problem here.” He shakes his head. “I must get better with those bloody books.”

“Why? Why do that now? Why do it then?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of living down here?” Faustus shouts. “All the darkness, all the time! It’s maddening. I want the sun again, I want to be able to show my face without fear of being found! Of being recognised and punished!”

“By whom?”

He points at Augustus, who looks perplexed.

“His uncle! My traitorous co-conspirator. He promised me…promised me every bit of power my heart desired, promised not to ignore me like your father. If only I did this one little favour for him, cleared his path, oh, what a glorious empire we would build.”

“The book. You left the book for me. You left a book for him.”

“And didn’t it work beautifully? What a good little girl you were, so suggestible, putting the poison in the soup.

All your brothers and sisters, your parents, gone in one fell swoop.

” Faustus looks at Augustus with less enthusiasm.

“You only had to get rid of your uncle and his wife,” he says almost to himself, shakes his head, baffled.

“But my little Millie, a mass murderer at the age of five!” He shakes his head again.

“Then I saw my old friend marching towards me with death in his eyes…when he should have been thanking me.”

“And you grabbed me and ran.”

“Still haven’t worked out how to make the possessed commit suicide afterwards, though.”

“You can’t – demons are surprisingly lifeward,” Millie says absently, then blinks to try and rid herself of the image of her family slumped over the dining table.

“But once they’re gone, sometimes the killers kill themselves.

” She looks at Gus, understanding dawning.

“I think he meant demon-you to kill me, but you-you simply asked me to bring them back.” Millie stares at Faustus again. “So, what now?”

“A new age. The librarian-king. The magician-king.” He raises his arms grandly, as if he’s not in a dingy little kingdom that smells like booze and sweat and a man who’s stewed himself and his brain for fifteen years.

“You’re a better bookbinder than you ever were a magician. Or a librarian for that matter.” Millie rolls her eyes, and steps in front of the crown prince. In the seconds Faustus takes to drain his drink, his eyes off her, she waves her hands, circling herself and Augustus; the line of salt forms.

“I’ve learnt some things.” He claps his hands together, chants a low-voiced spell. From the table where all the sharp bookbinding tools rest, four knives fly up, hover for a second, then speed towards Millie and the prince – and fall when they hit Millie’s protective barrier.

“You were so dismissive of my Witches, Faustus, but they taught me more than you’ll ever know.

” Calmly, Millie takes one of her knives and slices her palm, makes a fist and pumps it so the blood pools hot and warm; blood magic for the worst sort of thing.

She fixes Pandora’s face in her mind, that peaky, sneaky face with its ambition and its drive and its intelligence blunted by those things, the dusting of freckles, the curling red hair.

She thinks of the Witches’ lessons, how to call up a revenant from only the memory of them, how to sing a body into being long enough for it to do damage.

Soon enough, Pandora is gazing at her erstwhile employer, looking for the last very specific instructions.

“Him. Faustus Belisarius. He’s the one who did this to you. Take your vengeance on him, then go to your rest.”

And the temporary thing of flesh and blinding rage becomes a whirlwind of blades made of bone, turning upon the thin man.

Pandora, or what was once her, makes short work of Faustus – there’s not much of him for a meal – slicing and dicing, then descending on the wet, red remains.

Millie’s stomach turns at the sound of the feasting, but they cease soon enough and the revenant fades away.

Millie and Augustus stay in place for some time, until the prince puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her to face him. He wipes tears from Millie’s cheeks; she hadn’t realised she’d begun to cry. “I shouldn’t be so stupid. And I don’t really know who I’m weeping for.”

“You thought you meant something to him. It’s entirely understandable.”

She sags against him, breathes in his scent, lets his arms hold her up and lets herself think, for the barest sliver of a moment, that this might last. There’s a lot to consider, knowing what she does now, guilt and grief she’s carried more than half her life for something not her fault.

But there are other, more pressing things needing to be done, so all that must wait.

She forces herself to straighten, step away.

“Well, I suppose that’s that. You’ll be going to claim your throne, then? ”

“Oh. No. No way. Not for anything in the world. It’s your throne, really. You take it.”

“I don’t want the bloody thing!”

“Then…we leave? Go elsewhere? I like the idea of a farm but not the actual farming. So, another city? Travel for a while?”

Others, she supposed, might be driven by a sense of duty – noble obligation – to stay, to rule, but she’d not been brought up that way, and he’d never wanted it. “Are you asking me to run away with you?”

“Suppose I am. I mean, your house is on fire, your business all gone…” Augustus grins, then sobers.

“When did you last make a choice for yourself? The little I know of you: possessed by a murder demon, kidnapped by a librarian, sold to Witches and inherited their business. What would you like to do?”

She thinks about leaving a life below the sunline and living in the light once more. She thinks about him, that she’d like to know him better. And she thinks about the cities with banks that hold some of her money, any of which would be perfectly good places to start.