Page 23 of Silver in the Bone

“Librarian?” I called.

Heavy steps pounded across the floor as Librarian emerged from the back office, random bits of paper and packing tape stuck to his metal frame. I warmed at the sight of him and the familiar soft whirring of his inner mechanics.

The automaton moved as if he had been crafted yesterday, not thousands of years ago in the workshop of Daedalus—or Hephaestus himself, depending on which legend you wanted to believe. To most, he must have looked like a strange android, or a bronze statue that had suddenly come to life and stepped off its pedestal.

The strange, ancient quicksilver that gave life to him flowed through the gaps in his metallic joints and around his eyes. His metal, unmoving expression used to unnerve me as a kid, but now I found its dependability comforting.

“Yes, young Lark?” he chirped in ancient Greek.

In his past life, when the library had still been a sorceress’s vault, the automaton had guarded the treasure inside, though he was the most prized relic of her collection. The guild had successfully managed to retrain him to serve as both the caretaker of the library and the impartial enforcer of its rules. But while you could show an automaton how to vacuum, you apparently couldn’t teach him a modern language.

Cabell, ever the wonder, had picked up the three ancient languages we used most often in our line of work almost instantly when we were twelve, which had been beyond frustrating. Even with a photographic memory, it had taken me months to memorize ancient Greek, Latin, and Old Welsh, and I was still bad at speaking them.

“Do you know if the Dyes have the Sorceress Myfanwy’s Immortality?” I heard myself ask. “Downstairs, maybe?”

“No,” Librarian said. “They do not.”

I started to turn back toward my worktable, only for Librarian’s strange voice to bring me up short. “They do not, for it was ruined a day past. Young Dye asked me to dispose of it.”

“Ruined,” I repeated through gritted teeth.

“Yes, by a leak,” Librarian said, clearly repeating the lie Emrys had told him. “A tragedy.”

Librarian had no idea how true his words were. Emrys had taken the sorceress’s memories about the Ring of Dispel for himself and ensured the rest of us would never see them.

But that only proved to me that the Servant’s Prize and the Ring of Dispel were one and the same. There was something else to this. A suspicion that buzzed in my skull like a hornet.

I sat down at my table again. My skin was icy as the windows behind me as I pulled out Nash’s journal and flipped to the last entry.

The coded message was surrounded by dozens of the words Cabell and I had tried to unlock its secrets. Taking a piece of scrap paper, I added another to that list. Lancelot. And another. Dispel. And another. Ring.

I drew in a deep breath and tried one last word. Myfanwy.

The name of an obscure sorceress we’d never had business with, who had done almost nothing remarkable with her magic, who had been destined to become little more than a footnote in someone else’s story.

Using Myfanwy as the key, I rearranged the letters of the alphabet and started substituting them for the ones he had written. A word emerged. Then a sentence. Until, finally, the answer to the shadowy question that had haunted us for nearly seven years took sudden shape. A ghost of the past materialized in front of my eyes.

It wasn’t a message, or a memory, but a note to himself.

Must go alone and remove weapons before approaching—sorceress wants proof it’s Arthur’s dagger before trade—how? Tintagel, quarter till midnight. Use phrase I have your gift to identify self.

A strange calm washed over me.

Tintagel.

The place where we’d camped after weeks of searching for Arthur’s dagger Carnwennan.

The place where Cabell and I had gone to sleep inside our tent, only to wake to find our guardian gone.

The place where Nash had met a sorceress under the dark cloak of night to trade the dagger for the Ring of Dispel.

After bandaging his wounds the best I could, I had left Cabell to rest in his bedroom before heading to the library. As I came barreling out of the linen closet, riding high on my discovery, I was brought up short by the sight of his open bedroom door and empty bed.

“Cab?” I called. He’d cleaned up the wreckage of our fight. The sharp, lemony scent of stain remover rose around me, the chemicals hard at work soaking up blood from the rugs.

“Here” was the quiet response.

I moved down the short hall into the dark living room, then turned toward the kitchenette, only to realize the shadow on the couch was my brother. I switched on the overhead lights, my lungs tightening as I wondered how long he’d been sitting there alone.

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