I shoot her a dirty look. “I liked you better before you figured out how to do smartass.” Then I drop into the chair by the fireplace and untie my disheveled braids, combing them out with my fingers as I think.
So Emeric is still alive. Yannec’s ledger . . . hopefully he wrote in charcoal and the pages aren’t ruined.
Unless Emeric uses it to dig up anything else he can connect to me.
I’m safe for now—he won’t get the drop on me again, and without hard evidence, all he has is his word against that of the margrave’s fiancée. I know exactly how that will play out. But I still need the ledger.
The unfortunate junior prefect has left me a few souvenirs as well: In the tussle, he dropped his notebook and one of his knives, and his uniform jacket is still folded over the chair I’m in. I pull it into my lap to check the pockets. There’s a few red pennies andsjilling, a meticulously folded handkerchief, and nothing more.
I can’t help myself from reading the coat like I read the jewelry cases I empty. This one tells an unexpected story: It’s much too large for Emeric, riddled in the scars of old and neatly mended tears, even a worn patch or two on the elbow. A small constellation of holes over the breast pocket mark where badges and medals have been removed, and in fine red thread, there’s a name stitched inside the collar:H KLEMENS.
Either it’s stolen, a gift, or a hand-me-down. I can rule out the last one, as the Order of Prefects is too well funded to reuse uniforms. And I can rule out the first, because the impression I’ve gotten of Emeric Conrad thus far is that it would be physically and emotionally impossible for him to break a single law without screaming. So it’s a gift. Sentimental.
There’s a sharp, spicy smell to it, oddly familiar, and then I place it: juniper oil. The hedgewitch had worked some into the salve for my lash wounds years ago.
Old anger knots up along the lines of my scars. I stand, toss the coat into my wardrobe, then snap up Emeric’s notebook and knife from the ground. At least I can get a sense of what dirt he’s got on me, so I can prepare for the worst.
When I flip the pages, though, they’re all blank, except for a brief inscription on the first:
PROPERTY OF E CONRAD If found, please return to nearest outpost of Order of Prefects of the Godly Courts
Well, at least he’s an optimist.
I chew on a thumb tip. This isn’t a decoy; I saw him write in it at breakfast—it even still smells like coffee, though the stains are nowhere to be seen. There must be some kind of enchantment hiding his notes. I carry it back over to the fireplace, plopping down on the hearth this time to make use of the bright firelight.
It’s a surprisingly well-made little journal considering there’s no bookbinder’s seal stamped into the buckskin cover. That was my first guess, some charm hidden in an embellishment, for magic usually leaves a mark. It has to be anchored somehow, the way the pearls anchor the illusion of theprinzessin. I run my fingers over the cover, the endpapers, even the ink lines ofE CONRAD, but nothing sticks out.
It makes me angrier than it should. This isn’tfair. He broke into my room, all but flaunted his excruciating knowledge of my secrets; his stupid little book has no right to keep his. And I am so, so tired of being thwarted today.
I just want something, onesingleblessed thing, to work.
In the distance, the bells of the Göttermarkt begin to chime for the hour. I close my eyes, let myself be angry, tired, temporarily defeated, for each toll. When the seventh and final bell falls quiet, I take a deep breath.
Then I start thinking about how I’m going to pick this lock.
The thing about most locks is that they’re more of a stalling mechanism than anything. It’s not that they’re particularly complex; out of five or six pins, there’s just one or two set to give you trouble, and the point is to make you spend ten minutes figuring out which they are. But when you’re slipping between gaps in guard shifts, youhaveto be a miser with your time.
Idon’t have trouble with these locks, because I’ve gotten very fast at figuring out the tricky pins. The key is to test them one at a time. That’s what I need to do now, test this problem pin by pin.
The first one is: What am I dealing with? An illusion, to make the pages simplylookblank, or an enchantment that truly wiped them clean?
I flip a couple of pages in, then smudge my fingertips down the paper. They come away clean. I do the same to three more pages, with no result.
The first pin slides into place.
Emeric writes in charcoal. If it were only an illusion that makes the pages appear blank, they’d still leave charcoal all over my hands. It has to be an enchantment, one that steals the writing itself. So the next pin is:Where?
I poke around the book more, but nothing jumps at me. That is, until I lift my hand to turn a page and find a thin, perfect stripe of gray on the heel of my palm. When I rub at it, it smears away.Charcoal.
That second tricky pin is looking very promising.
A line of black bookbinding thread cuts down the crease of the journal in a long, stark stitch. I prod it carefully. My fingertip comes back with another streak of gray.
“Huh,” I mutter. Then I pull Emeric’s knife from its sheath and cut through the thread.
It’s like slashing open a sack of dried peas. Letters spill out from everywhere the stitch pierces paper, skittering into tidy lines, the thread fibers fading to plain white as they empty of charcoal. The pages themselves even crackle and shudder, coffee stains blooming once again, nicks and scrapes carving into the margins. I bark a hoarse laugh.
I may not have cracked Eiswald’s curse yet, but this, at least, I can manage.
