Every rush of terror boils up, every old wound splits open again, every strain of a strange kind of mourning, all of it surges to the surface. I am spilling over, I am drowning in the taste of blood and ash and juniper oil, I am bawling in a way I haven’t in years. I hate that they’re all here to see it, but I don’t even have room for shame.
For too long, the only sounds in the room are my broken sobs and the whispery rustles as Ragne picks dirt and grit from my hair.
Then the floorboards creak. Ragne growls, “No.You stay back.”
“I . . .” Emeric’s voice is stricken, gutted. “I have to . . .”
“I think you both need some room, Conrad,” Joniza says somewhere far away. “You stay here with Gisele, maybe have some tea. I’ll take Vanja upstairs and let Umayya know the children can come down now.”
Gisele’s voice shifts past me, the floorboards groaning as she walks toward the kitchen. “I still don’t understand who would go to the trouble of framing Vanja.”
“They didn’t,” Emeric says with the weary, bitter clarity of a man realizing his purse was cut. “Last night, von Reigenbach said he would deal with the prefects. So he framed thePfennigeist.”
I hear a soft crinkle as the journal is picked up—then a fleshy littlethudand Joniza’s sharp gasp.
I look up. A tinymahris flailing on its back at Emeric’s feet, where the journal was. It’s barely bigger than a beetle.
Joniza freezes halfway between me and Emeric. She lets out a squeak of disgust and stomps on themahras fast as she can. There’s a foul little crunch.
“Oh,” Gisele says. “Was it spying—”
She doesn’t finish that thought. Blue flames burst out from beneath Joniza’s boot like lantern oil catching a spark. Joniza leaps back with a startled curse.
Gisele grabs a pail of sand beside the stove and throws it over the flames.
They go out. Then they flare up again around the sand, blue fire licking across the floorboards.
That’s when we all realize: This fire will not die. Adalbrecht means to burn us all down.
“Umayya!” Gisele runs for the stairs. “We need to get everyone outside, now!”
“Up, up—” Ragne helps me to my feet.
Joniza starts for the kitchen door, but there’s no time to drag the table out of the way. She doubles back and undoes the deadbolt on the front door, then yanks.
It lurches—then stops. Joniza tries again. It doesn’t budge.
Both doors are blocked.
We’re trapped.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
House ofFortune
It’s the little things in life that surprise you, isn’t it? Like how you can be trapped in a burning building, and it’ll still seem easier to deal with than being accused of murder by a boy you thought you might—no.
Blue flames creep over the floor as Ragne hauls me from the corner. I hear Umayya and Gisele ordering the older orphans to get their shoes on as fast as they can.
Joniza gives the front door another frantic shake. “Come on,come on.”
“Jammed from the outside,” Emeric says tightly. “The windows—?”
Orange flames crawl up the other side of the glass panes, and when I gasp, it reeks of lantern oil.Of course.Adalbrecht wanted to deal with the prefects. Dozens of Wolfhünden would have seen Emeric run here, and Papa Wolf never does things by halves.
Ragne lets me go, then swells into an enormous black bear. She lumbers to the door as Joniza clears the way, then hurls her weight against the wood. There’s an awful squallingcrack. One more heave and the door collapses.
There’s a scream from the top of the stairs. One of the younger children is hiding her face in Fabine’s skirt and babbling about the bear. Ragne shifts down to a cat, running in agitated circles in the front room. “Hurry!” she yowls. “Out!”
