We escaped down the labyrinth, the party of us scattering in different directions, John, Patrick, and I one way, Theo and Polly dragged in another. The giant walls of shelves toppled at our backs, one into the other, gaining momentum, a landslide of books crashing and filling the corridors. The thunderous crunch of wood as it collided and splintered. A heavy volume struck my shoulder as we ran. John expelled pieces of broken timber falling overhead, just barely holding off the weight of them long enough for us to pass through, to turn the corners, to sprint down the aisles. Books crashed into my shoulders, my head, caught the backs of my legs. But Patrick had my arm, hadn’t let it go once, and he pulled me onward faster than my legs could manage.
“Don’t look back!” he shouted, and I ran harder than my lungs could tolerate.
We spilled out into the main foyer as the last shelf fell, buckling in an earsplitting crash, and we didn’t stop. We rushed to the doors, feet pounding off the cracked marble.
We ran out into the briny air, a small crowd of Artisans in the square watching on in horror. Pieces of the clock tower were now strewn on the ground, the cobblestones cracked. Several members of the crowd approached as though they meant to offer help, faces stark in the approaching night.
We barreled through them all, past the limp coppers with their gaping mouths and half-raised batons, past the buckled coach and its frantic horses.
I tripped on my skirts, my legs failing me now, my heeled shoes slipping on the debris, and then Patrick’s arm was around my torso, lifting me off my feet.
I was carried past the gawkers who were just now realizing they knew my face, and Patrick’s. That fugitives, escaped war criminals, had been among them. My limbs went slack in Patrick’s hold. The darkness of an alley closed in.
But my eyes stuck to the library doors until they were out of sight.
CHAPTER FIFTYTHEO
Theo walked as though sleep had taken hold of his limbs.
With two soldiers on his arms, he moved as one does in dreams, mindless and numb, their bones not their own. His father walked ahead of him with the Charmers flanking his sides. Polly was pulled along somewhere at Theo’s back. He could not look at her without his eyes descending to her ruined hands.
They were escorted not to the coach, which had buckled beneath the fallen clock tower, but to the edge of the ramparts, a handful of soldiers awaiting them, looking reticent to have been called to duty this night. Theo noticed that there was a certain care to the way they marched him away, as though this were a rescue and not an arrest.
He blinked at the passing streetlamps and watched photons burst in the distortion of his sight. He felt stupid, dazed, his head rattling with the effects of shell shock. He couldn’t be sure if the stars over the sea were rearranging their constellations or if he was finally succumbing to madness.
Perhaps it was best he let it come. Let sanity give way to something painless and quiet. Let him hope for less than love from this moment on.
Better that than this yawning awareness that he was utterly alone.
They were loaded hastily into a wagon under flickering lamplight while most of Lavnonshire hid itself away and the sea thrashed the cliffside. The horses were unadorned and matched the choleric officers who lifted Polly, Theo, and his father into the wagon bed.
There was no canopy, and so the braver residents watched from their high windows as the wagon was pulled away through Lavnonshire’s maze. The Charmers and officers followed behind at a leisurely pace, scowling up at the fluttering curtains until Crafters scurried back from the glass.
Theo’s father sighed tiredly. “We’re a spectacle,” he said, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses on his nose—embarrassed, Theo imagined, to be seen on Crafter transport. “We’ll be taken on a private train to the city.”
Theo barely heard him. He leaned forward, let his face fall into his hands, and suppressed the urge to vomit.
“What you’re feeling, Theodore, is shame,” his father said bluntly. “You’ve brought every bit of it onto yourself.”
Theo had never been surer that this was true, though not in the way Terrence Shop thought.
“If you’re so ashamed of me, why not leave me in the brink?” he asked. “Why bring me back at all? Surely the House won’t let you reinstate me after I deserted.”
“But you didn’t desert the House, Theodore. You were taken hostage, and this is your rescue.” What he implied was clear. The newsprint would establish his father a hero by morning. Another win for the House.
“You can save your tantrum for the journey home, if you please. There are plenty of walls for you to thrash your head against. But youwillreturn home with me and carry out your duty as you were meant to, whether willingly or by force.”
“Because it spares you a scandal?”
“Because you are myson!” Lord Shop said, his voice rising for the first time. “And because I did not invest every ounce of leverage I had in you only for you to squander our family name on somegirlfrom the brink!” He said it as though there were no greater insult to him.
Theo closed his eyes and felt the invisible pressure of ever-tightening binds cinching him inward. He said the only helpful thing he could hope to say. “If your Charmers burn Polly again, I’ll drown them. There’s plenty of water at hand.”
“Interesting,” Lord Shop said condescendingly. “Have your affections changed?”
Theo looked up to see him inspect Polly with no small measure of disgust. She was cradling her bleeding hands carefully against her chest, curling into herself like she was expecting another blow. His father shook his head, perplexed. “Truly, Theo, you are a simpleton when it comes to the female persuasion.”
But of course his father wouldn’t understand friendship. There were only ever alliances. “She needs a doctor,” Theo said. “And bluff.”
