Page 53

Rose spun around, stifling her shriek as she saw that it was Hannah who stood behind her.

Hannah continued as if nothing had happened and there wasn’t a maniac stalking them in a maze. “But you’re a special case, since you fill an entire book in my world. You are, in some sense, a book.”

“I’m not…” Rose looked down at herself, torn and scratched and dirty. “And if I am, then I’m an ill-used book.” She looked up sharply at Hannah. “How did you get in then?”

“Magic!” Hannah flourished her wand. “Also, I have a book.” She tapped the wand to a large, rectangular object under her left arm, a book-shaped object wrapped in a black cloth.

“Where—”

“We were just in a library. The Library!” Hannah said. “It was on one of the reading desks. And if it weren’t currently wrapped in an enchanted shawl then we would both be inside this book.” She tapped it again for good measure. “Instead of being inside…yours…you…”

She tucked her wand behind her ear and began to unwrap the cloth.

“Why are you…” The sound of tearing vegetation made Rose tail off. Despite the garden’s efforts, Gar was drawing closer.

Across a square of box hedge and lavender that surrounded a small fountain, the seething greenery began to die. The roses that had so valiantly bound themselves around the intruder started to blacken and fall.

The tome that Hannah unwrapped surprised Rose by being neither ancient nor leather-bound. The cover art showed a magnificently complex architecture of staircases, ornate lamps, and books, a near infinity of books.

“I can’t read the title…” It wasn’t that she didn’t know the language or that it was written in too small a font, simply that every time Rose tried to focus on any word within it, that word would somehow slip away from her.

“You’re too close to it,” Hannah said, and opened the cover.

And in an instant the garden, the Muse’s house, the sky studded with puffy white cloud all vanished.

Rose staggered as if she had suddenly found herself on top of a tall and narrow column with a drop on every side, though in truth she stood now in a crowd of people all bound on different paths. Grand buildings bordered the great square, with a merciless desert sky above her and a great mountain rearing over the rooftops.

“Where…” Rose glanced in panic from one side to the other, but nobody in the throng seemed in the least bit interested in her. Perhaps her outfit was so ragged that the differences weren’t apparent. This wasn’t a modern city—their clothes made the Victorian garb of Miss Havisham’s visitors seem avant-garde. And still, the people just slipped past her without so much as blinking. Did they just think her a beggar?

“It doesn’t matter where,” Hannah said, as if such things often happened when she opened a book. “It’s just a story, like every city.”

“Gar!” Rose spotted him towering above the oblivious citizens, his eye patch gone and the gory hole spearing her through as if it truly saw her. Panic seized her again. There was no escaping the man.

“Quickly now.” Hannah raised her wand and nodded behind her. “Time to leave.”

Inexplicably the cell door through which they had entered the Mechanism stood behind them, unsupported, unnoticed by the crowd. Gar surged toward them, pushing through the people blocking his way, an elderly woman falling in his wake.

Rose pushed at the door, finding a resistance that hadn’t been there before. It started to give, but slowly, with rusty squeals of protest from its hinges.

“You!” Gar’s shout reached her through the stew of voices. “Stop! Stop, thief!”

Rose, with her shoulder to the door, pushing for all she was worth, glanced back and shouted at Hannah. “Help me!”

Gar was pointing at them now, and people were starting to listen to him. A hand grabbed at Rose’s shoulder. “I’ve got her!”

Gar, shoving aside the last few people, was just yards from Rose, and Hannah stood uselessly facing him, neither adding her strength to the opening of the door, nor doing anything to slow the man down. Another bystander snatched at Rose’s arm. With a cry of rage she threw herself back against the door. It gave up the battle without warning, tearing her free of the hands holding her and spilling her on the ground beyond.

A moment later, Hannah stepped back smartly through the doorway, wand now raised and moving.

From the floor of the great reading room where the Mechanism stood, Rose could no longer see Gar, only confused crowd members standing there as if there were no doorway and their quarry had just vanished into nothingness.

“Well, shut it then!” Hannah snapped.

Rose had a hot reply on her tongue, but Gar loomed above the last two or three people between him and the doorway, and unlike the rest, he seemed to see it for what it was, his ruined stare meeting Rose’s angry one.

Rose lashed out with her foot, slamming the door shut. She got to her feet, cursing in pain, “Fucklesticks!” and hopped forward to brace the exit. Through the barred window, instead of the darkness she’d seen earlier, she could now see the city square, the crowd, the distant mountain peak, and…Gar…standing in confusion. It was him, the one-eyed vagrant, but somehow he was dressed like the rest of them now, only more grandly, a jacket of embroidered silk, a golden brooch pinned at his breast, a gold circle, and his eye patch was back, now crimson fabric.

“Lord Algar!” A man approached him, smartly clad but looking like a servant of some sort. “Are you feeling unwell, Lord Algar?”