“I was the next to arrive, having taken a more scenic route through the Grimmwald, collecting stories as I traveled. When I met your mother in the city, she was agitated. She tried to warn me of something troubling about the keeper of When and advised that I take precautions to protect myself and The Book of Where.” He lowered his head. “I did not listen.
“The hour finally came, and we four assembled along the shores of Bustleburgh, at the feet of the Wolves of Dawn. It was the middle of the night, and the stars were luminous and fiery. It was there that tragedy struck. At the very moment when we were meant to begin the summoning, the fourth Storyguard—the traitor—produced a fascinator.” He looked at Sophie. “You are familiar with these?”
“I think it’s some kind of trap,” Sophie said.
He nodded. “It is a candle whose effect is to petrify all who look upon it for as long as it burns. Instantly, the three of us were fixed in place—unable to move or even blink. The traitor took the books from us and spoke the Two Words that unlocked the power of the Four Questions. The books brought forth a beast unlike any I had ever seen—a swirling vortex of unbridled power and rage.”
“The Zeitgeist,” Sophie said, recalling what The Book of What had told her back in the bog.
“Perhaps that is the creature’s name. I only know that, before it could fully manifest, it was ripped in two and disappeared into the night air—dead before it had ever lived . . .”
“Why did it die?” Sophie said.
The man looked at her. “Your mother killed it.” He shook his head. “Somehow. I still do not understand. All I know is that, unlike myself and poor Veena, Coriander managed to break free from the fascinator’s charm and stop the summoning. She wrestled The Book of Who from the traitor’s hands and fled into the streets, the traitor following her.” He closed his eyes, as though still remembering that night twelve years before. “That was the last I ever saw of either of them.”
“She was murdered in the bookshop,” Sophie said. “Stabbed through the heart.”
“Your mother’s sacrifice was not in vain,” Scrivener Behn said. “Not long after she fled, the fascinator’s wick burned away, and the flame died. I soon found myself able to move again.”
“And my mistress?” Akrasia said. “What of her?”
Scrivener Behn looked at the creature, whose face bore an expression more of fear than anger. “She was an old woman, and frail. It seemed the effects of the fascinator had not only stopped her hands and feet, but also her heart. I’m sorry.
“All was not lost, however. The traitor had fled in pursuit of Coriander, leaving behind the books of What and Where, which I collected. I found myself alone in a foreign city with two books that needed protection—that needed to be hidden someplace where the traitor could never find them. And so I did what I had been trained to do.”
“You asked the books?”
“The Book of Where told me where to go. I took Veena’s carriage and sped to the woods, her companion tigress at my side. I soon found myself before an abandoned castle with a library unlike any I had seen before or since.” He looked at the tigress. “I knew you would protect the book, Akrasia, but I had to ensure you didn’t despair and abandon your post, and so I asked The Book of What if there were some way I could keep you from straying. It told me to use a widow’s might.”
Akrasia growled. “And you obeyed without question.”
“I did,” he said. “Just as I obeyed The Book of Where when it told me to hide myself at the mouth of the Uncannyon—the only place where I could escape the eye of the traitorous Storyguard. Our lives did not matter, but the books had to be protected.”
Sophie watched Akrasia, whose yellow eyes were narrow. The floor beneath her was vibrating from the tigress’s growls. “And my mistress?” Akrasia said. “You left her dead in the street?”
Scrivener Behn shook his head. “Veena Bluestocking was from the Antipodes. I knew something of the customs of her people, so I carried her to the river and laid her to rest on a small boat.” He stared out the open window at the vast darkness stretching beyond. “I like to think that the waters might have carried her body into the Uncannyon. And that she is there still.” He lowered his head, his story complete.
If this answer mollified the beast, Sophie could not tell. It was, perhaps, enough that it had prevented Akrasia from attacking the man.
Sophie reached down and placed a hand on the tigress’s thick mane. “Scrivener Behn, you said that the Four Questions can summon any entry into the world.” She swallowed, almost unable to speak the words. “Does that mean they could bring back my mother?”
The man searched her eyes, his expression laden with compassion. “Even if you had all four books, I fear you could not raise the dead. To speak your mother’s name would likely summon only her bones. I’m sorry.”
“It is as I have foretold, my cub,” Akrasia said, her voice gentler than it had been before. “Where these books go, blood follows.”
Sophie clutched The Book of Where. It felt as if her chest had been hollowed out and might cave in if she squeezed too hard. During this entire journey, she had held out a hope that these books would somehow draw her closer to her mother—and maybe even provide a way to see her once more. Instead, they had done the opposite—bringing her absolute understanding that she would never see her mother again. “It’s like Papa always told me,” she said, sniffing. “It’s troublesome luck to trouble the dead.” She thought of how far she had traveled, all the dangers she had faced, all for these books that only brought destruction.
“Scrivener Behn,” she said after a moment. “I need to know something. What was the traitor’s name?”
“Haven’t you guessed it?” said a voice behind her.
Sophie turned around to see a man standing at the top of the stairs. He was tall, rail-thin, wearing gold spectacles and an immaculately tailored blue coat. In one hand he held an ebony cane. “Inquisitor Prigg?” Sophie said.
The man gave a warm smile. “I do hope I’m not interrupting.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
PLIGHT of the COMMON MAN
Sophie stared at the man standing before her. He was watching her with an expression rather like a cat that had found a particularly delicious mouse. “You’re the Storyguard?” she said.
“Storyguard?” Prigg gave an almost winsome laugh. “Now, there’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long time.” He shook his head, moving away from the steps. “I am but a humble civil servant, wholly devoted to the common man.”
His eyes crept over the stacks of books lining the floor. “It seems you’ve kept yourself busy, Behn.” He picked up a book entitled The Hall of Many Voices and flipped through its pages. “I wondered how fresh nonsense kept finding its way into Bustleburgh. I should have suspected you were behind it.” He tossed the book out the open window into the darkness. There was a faint splashing sound as the book struck the river somewhere far below.
“What have you done to the pilgrims?” Scrivener Behn demanded.
Prigg made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “I presume you are speaking of that rather crude assemblage of relics and freaks downstairs.” He drummed his fingers on the stair rail. “I have this encampment surrounded by six dozen troops, all with muskets at the ready. They have been instructed to fire if I do not return in the next five minutes. To put it more plainly: If you touch me, everyone downstairs will die.”
Akrasia growled. “You think I care for the lives of those pilgrims?”
“No. But I do think you care for the life of the girl,” he said. “And if something happens to me, she, too, will die.”
This seemed to restrain Akrasia’s wrath, for which Sophie was grateful. “How did you find us?” she said.
Prigg raised an eyebrow. “For that, you have Madame Eldritch to thank. She led us straight to you. I suspect she thought she might be able to turn the odds in her favor . . .” He reached out the window and caught a sprite as it wove through
the fog. “Though that seems unlikely now.” Prigg closed his fist, crushing the sprite. There was a small shriek, and then the light from the creature was gone.
“Where’s Sir Tode?” Sophie said, recalling what Akrasia had told her about his being captured.
“I presume you’re referring to that hideous pet of yours?” Prigg said. “He is unharmed for the moment. Whether he remains unharmed is entirely up to you.” He held out his hand. “I shall have that book now.”
Sophie clasped The Book of Where to her chest, inching back. “So, this whole time, you weren’t chasing me for breaking laws,” she said. “You just wanted the book.”
“Perceptive as always. But want is not a strong enough word. For twelve years, I have toiled at the foot of the Pyre, inspecting every bit of nonsense that passed through those gates and receiving not so much as a whisper of a clue about where any of the Four Questions might be hidden.”
Sophie felt a quiver in the back of her spine as she realized what the man was saying. “That’s the reason you let us keep the bookshop open,” Sophie said. “In case it appeared there.”
“Your shop was The Book of Who’s last known location—it seemed like a wise precaution. I allowed Madame Eldritch to continue operating for very similar reasons.” He stepped closer. “Even so, you cannot imagine my surprise when I came across the book nestled safely inside your stove—and my irritation at your flight. Though I suppose I should have expected as much. You are not the first Quire I have made the mistake of underestimating.”
“You’re a traitor,” Scrivener Behn said. “You had a sworn duty to protect magic.”
“A traitor? To whom?” Prigg gave a humorless laugh. “It is true that I once thought as you did. For many years, I toiled in service of magic, valiantly working alongside my fellow Storyguard to preserve stories in the world. Until one day I finally sat down and read my precious Book of When. An infinite chronicle of magic at work in the world. And do you know what I discovered? I discovered the truth: that magic is a cruel, heartless beast.” He walked the length of the room like a barrister before the court. “Do you remember the Celestial Quadrille we summoned, Behn?”
Scrivener Behn nodded. “It was an ancient dance of the constellations, not seen for millennia. The Storyguard summoned its return to the Icicle Mountains, whose skies now come alive every solstice. A lost wonder restored through our good work.”
Prigg put a hand to his heart. “That’s true—and it is quite beautiful to behold. Less beautiful are the floods it creates every year, wiping out villages and flocks at the foot of the mountains.” His face was dead sober.
Scrivener Behn shifted slightly. “Is this true?” He sounded genuine in his shock.
“True as the ticking of a clock,” Prigg said. “You and the other Storyguard were already off to someplace new, conjuring up more horrors. I, however, stayed behind to tend the wounded. And it was there I saw the salvation of these people—not by magic potion or sacred ritual, but by the studious application of medical science at the hands of trained physicians. And in that moment, I realized the truth: Magic has no care for the plight of the common man.”
He walked in front of them, his cane behind his back. “For countless centuries, magic gripped the ordinary world in a vise of terror. Fairies used to steal children away and leave sickly change-lings in their stead. House cats would rob their masters. A forest was just as likely to eat you as shelter you. When you offended a beggar crone, she did not sue you in a court of law—instead, she cursed you and your children and your children’s children. People ate fairy fruit and went mad with hunger. Djinni granted wishes designed to trap you in your own desires. When there was an earthquake or blizzard or hurricane, you could be sure it was due to some king or queen feeling sad—the amount of destruction caused by lovesick royalty is incalculable!” His voice echoed loudly in the open room. Sprites scattered around him, as if they, too, were listening.
He wheeled around, stepping closer to Sophie. “You have spent a lifetime reading about magic. Can you deny what I say?”
Sophie stared at him, refusing to flinch. She knew he was right—at least in a sense. The stories she so loved were filled with the exact horrors he had mentioned and a hundred others besides: dragons and witches and ghouls and tyrant kings and wicked stepmothers. Things that, if Sophie had encountered them in her own life, she would have denounced as evil. And still, she knew deep within herself that this man, whatever he was, represented an evil much greater.
Prigg seemed to take her silence for assent. “When the next Evensong was determined to be held in Bustleburgh—in my homeland—I knew something had to be done before that place, too, was destroyed.”
“So you decided to destroy it first,” Scrivener Behn said.
“No, my foolish scribbler. I have made this world better. Safer. More dependable. There are no more fairy feasts in Bustleburgh, but neither are there starving widows. The lame man no longer experiences miraculous healing, but he now has a physician to soothe his pain. Children have no time for perilous adventures, because they are employed in productive work. We have no glass orchards or wishing wells, but we do have courthouses and factories and hospitals and schools.”
“But to destroy all magic everywhere . . .” Sophie said. “There must be some other way.”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Prigg said. “The world is not big enough for both man and magic—perhaps it never was. In order for man to live, magic must die.”
“Magic cannot die,” Scrivener Behn said, stepping toward him. “So long as there is wonder in the hearts of men, so, too, will there be magic.”
“On that count, my old friend, you are very right. Which is why I do not intend to destroy magic, but rather destroy the thing that creates it.”
It took a moment for Sophie to realize what he was implying. “Stories,” she said, holding The Book of Where to her chest. “You want to destroy every story in the world.”
Prigg smiled like an approving schoolmaster. “Precisely.” He clapped his hands, and two armed guards appeared at the landing. One of them was holding a torch. Prigg took the torch from him and stepped to Scrivener Behn’s bookcase. “Why don’t we start here?”
Peter was lying on the deck of the Last Resort, one arm pulled behind him, Knucklemeat’s gun pressed against the back of his skull. He wrinkled his nose, smelling the sweet odor of burning paper somewhere high above. It was coming from the lighthouse. He didn’t need to ask who had set the fire. Prigg had gone up there with two guards, one of whom had been holding a torch. He only hoped that Sophie was still safe.
“I’ll be taking this back,” Knucklemeat said, unlooping the book harness from Peter’s shoulder and putting it over his own. “And no squirming. You wouldn’t want my trigger finger to slip.”
Taro and the other pilgrims were all corralled in the middle of the tavern, surrounded by about fifty armed guards, with more outside on the shore. The sound of their approach had been muffled by the fog and had caught everyone off guard. Peter, who should have heard them nonetheless, had been so focused on trying to listen to Sophie’s conversation up in the lighthouse that he hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late.
Now they were all just waiting for Prigg and the others to return from the lighthouse, which was ablaze above them. Peter could feel the hot air radiating down through the roof as the tower burned. He could smell the flecks of ash swirling through the air. He could hear the screams of sprites as their wings burned in the flames. He gritted his teeth, desperately hoping that Sophie was unharmed. He didn’t care about the mission or the books. But Sophie had to be alive.
The door in the back of the galley opened up, and Prigg stepped out. More footsteps followed—too many to count. “Sophie!” Peter cried, pulling against Knucklemeat’s grip.
“I’m here,” she said. She grunted as a guard shoved her to the ground beside him. Her heartbeat was muted, and Peter thought she might be holding something to her chest. A
nother book, perhaps?
“No funny business, you two,” Knucklemeat said, and drew a second gun from his belt. “I’ve got bullets enough for you both.” He spat an acrid glob of tobacco onto the floor beside Peter’s face.
Akrasia snarled as several guards jabbed bayonets at her back and forced her to the floor.
Peter could smell fresh blood in the air. He turned his head away, unable to block out the sound of blades piercing the beast’s flesh.
“Every wound you inflict upon me,” the tigress snarled at her attackers, “I will pay back a hundredfold.”
“We tried to stop ’em, Behn,” called Liesel. Her voice was strained, thin, and Peter thought she might have a bayonet against her throat. “But there were too many of ’em.”
Scrivener Behn was standing at the door. “This is how you treat innocent folk?” he said, his voice numb with shock. “What of your noble laws now?”
“Ends over means, old colleague,” Prigg said.
Peter was confused by the word colleague. Did Prigg and Behn know each other somehow?
“But you are right,” Prigg continued. “We are neither of us born fighters. I have no appetite for needless bloodshed, and I’m sure you feel the same. If you order your associates to surrender, they may just listen. I promise each of them will receive a fair trial back in Bustleburgh.”
Scrivener Behn was silent for a moment and then turned away from Prigg to face the others. Peter could hear the man’s heartbeat, which was slow and steady. “Friends,” he called in a loud voice. “You came to me seeking asylum, but it seems there is no such thing. Not for us. You are each of you the last of your kind. These men and men like them have taken everything you have—your homes, your kinsmen, your peace. And now they want to erase even the memory of you from this world.” He shook his head. “And perhaps they are within their rights to do it. The world seems determined to leave ones such as us behind. And who are we to toil against the irresistible march of progress?” He spat this last word out like a curse. “The Inquisitor has promised that if we lay down our arms, he will spare our lives. Such as they are.”