He ignored me. “There’s a market at tonight’s destination. It’s open late.” He dumped a stack of silver disks on the table. They were curiously blank. “These coins should work for supplies. Purchase coal, ink, parchment, or vellum. Whatever you wish. I’m granting you the ability to come and go as you please, should you need more. Of course you’ll have an escort waiting in the hall at all times.”
Right. “A guard, you mean?”
“Semantics,” he said, and smiled.
He didn’t care about the black bird who flew out before midnight, or Sazerat, or Bel, or anyone else inside. Now he expected me to be his pawn.
I refused to help him have more power. In one swoop, I picked up the catalogue page and stalked toward the fire with the intent to burn it.
Alastair snatched my wrist and pried the page from my hand. “I wouldn’t have done that if I were you.”
He muttered another command. A bell appeared in the wall beside the door, like the service bells in some of the fancier guest suites. He snapped his fingers and it chimed.
“What’s happening?”
He didn’t answer me. A few seconds later, the doorknob jiggled. “Jani? Jani, are you in there?”
My heart nearly sailed from my chest.
Zosa.
“I’m here!” I ran over and pulled on the doorknob while she beat her fists on the other side. The door wouldn’t budge. “Open it,” I begged.
I managed to get the knob to turn. A click. The door opened half an inch. Enough for her slim fingers to push through the opening and nothing more. They scrabbled along the seam. No feathers or wings; they were real and human, and they reached for me. I touched them—I touched her. Felt her. For the first time in weeks.
Alastair brushed me aside.
“Let her in,” I choked.
He didn’t. With one swift movement, he pulled Zosa’s fingers through to above the knuckle. The seam of the door grew teeth.
No!
It slammed shut in a sickening bite, leaving behind a smudge of red and four slim fingers in Alastair’s palm.
I dropped to my knees, shaking.
When the door did open, Des Rêves stood there, a cage in her hand. Inside, a small golden bird began to keen; one wing slumped. Blood leaked from a row of missing feathers near the edge. Zosa’s dark eyes watched me as tears slid down my cheeks.
Alastair held up my sister’s severed fingers. Des Rêves made a face but bundled them in a silk handkerchief. “Give one to Yrsa,” he said, wiping off the blood.
I looked up in disbelief. “I thought Yrsa only took eyes.”
“Fingers don’t work as quickly as eyes, but they do the job.” When he flicked out his pointer finger with the same action as Bel’s switchblade, a new wave of horror crashed through me. “I take it Bel never told you?”
People might believe Alastair to be the greatest suminaire in all the world, but he was nothing but a monster.
He pointed to the cosmolabe. “A midnight has passed. You have three more to draw me a map to that ring, so I suggest you head out now and purchase supplies. Fail to draw my map and it won’t be you I punish.” He took the atlas and walked away after Des Rêves, leaving me with nothing but the page from his ledger, the entry for that horrible ring.
When the door shut, I slid down the length of it. I wept until my eyes were bloodshot and swollen, until the tears ran dry and my mind was clear enough to think.
My knees threatened to give out, but I forced myself to stand. I faced the portrait. The woman stared back at me, teary eyes similar to my own.
“Did he threaten you, too?” I asked, half expecting her to flash her teeth and laugh. I probably looked as pathetic as I felt.
If I found Alastair’s ring, he would have more power. He said he wanted to use it for good, but after everything I’d seen, there was no chance of that happening.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured that infinite ledger tucked away in the third desk drawer on the right. If I could get to it and void our contracts, this would all be over. We could walk out the door and never look back.
But even though I knew where the contracts were kept, getting there still seemed impossible. And once I was there, I didn’t know how to void Alastair’s ink. Bel had said it wasn’t as simple as rending the contracts in two, that it required powerful magic that I clearly didn’t have.
“How do I get out of this god-awful mess?” I asked the painting. “How do we escape?”
The catalogue page sat crumpled on the table. That description of the ring: Bestows and erases magic.