Page 60 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Whatever car we steal once you drag me across the wards to the road.”

Nicholas stared at him, unmoving, and Collins threw his hands into the air like he might wrap them around Nicholas’s neck. His blue eyes were nearly all pupil, Nicholas saw, and his normally laconic voice was more animated than Nicholas had ever heard it.

“We have one chance,” Collins said. “One chance to get out of here. If we don’t leave now, Richard and Maram will come back, and nothing will—I won’t be able to—we’ll never—” he choked, hacking on the words, then cursed. “Don’t you trust Maram? You have to trust her.”

Nicholas looked at him. “And you.”

“Yeah,” Collins said. “You have to trust me, too.”

Again, Nicholas pictured that jar on its shelf in Richard’s study. He remembered rope cutting into his wrists and the bright haze of the hospital room. It had taken him a while to adjust to being half-blind. At first, he’d been a mess, dropping glasses off the edges of tables, bumping into things, his head always pounding with the strain. Now, though, he was used to it. His left shin was still bruised more often than not, and he was never going to win any prizes at catch, but those things didn’t actively bother him. After ten years, being monocular felt as much a part of him as being right-handed or getting freckled in the sun.

So you see,said a voice in his mind,it’s not so bad, what was done to you. Lots of people have it worse, but look at you, you live a life of luxury in a beautiful home, you want for nothing. You don’t really mean to give that up out of spite for something that happened so long ago, do you?

The voice was reasonable, affectionate.

The voice was Richard’s.

Nicholas looked at his study, at the lovely rug, the lovely furniture, the lovely view of the water and rolling green beyond. Comfortable and unchanging, like everything in his life. But his lifehadchanged. It had changed the moment he’d seen his lost eye: the moment he’d seen the truth of what Richard had done to him.

Not only that. He’d seen the truth of what Richard still might do. Nicholas had another eye, after all. He had a whole body full of blood for the taking, and Maram, who knew all of Richard’s plans, was telling him to run.

Collins was staring down at Nicholas and vibrating with the effort of restraining his impatience, his jaw tight and his lips pressed together. He was frightened, Nicholas realized. Truly frightened.

Richard was Nicholas’s only family, his sole guardian, and still he had done what he’d done to his nephew.

What might he do to Collins, who was not family, or even a friend, but a mere employee?

Nicholas had argued with his uncle so many times over the years, fighting to loosen his restrictions only to feel them growing ever tighter, chains made from links of hard, rattling fear. Fear that Richard had instilled in him, first with stories of his murdered parents and then with false threats and real injuries. And Nicholas was still afraid: desperately so.

But the only thing more terrifying than the thought of leaving the Library was the thought of staying.

“We’re bringing Sir Kiwi,” Nicholas said.

Collins took a deep breath through his nose and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he did something unexpected, and smiled.

“Duh,” he said.

Part Two

The Scribe

18

The cargo plane sat on the runway, looking like a toy against the vast expanse of snow. Above, the sky was still the rich dark blue of night, but the horizon line glowed pink with incipient sun. Dawn was breaking over Esther’s last day on the Antarctic continent.

She made pointless small talk with the people on duty as she waited for the plane to load, every word and movement made with a heightened sense of surreality, as if she could reach out a hand and alter the fabric of the world. That’s what killing was, wasn’t it? To remove someone from existence was to rip a hole in what was real. She had not shot Trev herself, yet she felt as if she had and she knew, if the gun had been in her hand, she would have. Killing had been added, suddenly, to the list of what she was capable of. It had gone from unthinkable to possible. Was this how people tipped over into darkness?

In a daze she finished filling out her paperwork. In a daze she said good-bye. The lack of food and sleep compounded her sense of unreality and she worried, as faces blurred together and her movements became more and more mechanical, that she might pass out, but she did not.

Pearl would wake this morning alone in her bed in the clinic and Esther would be gone. She wouldn’t know why. She’d be in pain. Her body would be telling her that something horrendous had happened and her mind wouldn’t know what it was. She wouldn’t remember the promise Esther had made, the promise to come back for her and tell her everything, but Esther would remember. Would Pearl even speak to her again, after what Esther was doing now, leaving without a word? There was no way to know.

Somehow, she climbed aboard the small plane. She strapped herselfinto the little, blue-padded seat, watching the back of the pilot’s head as he made adjustments she didn’t understand, and she thought suddenly, yearningly, of sitting in her father’s old red truck with her sister, how safe she’d felt behind the wheel, how in-control. Her senses filled with the loud rumble of the plane’s engine as it zoomed down the runway. Outside her window it was daylight, as it would be here for the next few months. The ground was endless, white, receding. The station dollhouse-sized and then teacup-sized and then ant-sized and then gone.

She leaned her forehead against the cold window, fighting back tears. She had done this so many times: watched a twelve-month life recede below her as she flew away from it. A year felt so long unless it was all you had.

Before now—before Pearl—the most difficult departure had been flying away from Mexico City, because she’d so clearly remembered flying into it. Remembered looking down at the endless carpet of lights and thinking one, at least, might illuminate an answer.

Isabel, like Abe, came from a family that could hear magic, and like Abe’s family they had been collectors. Abe had never told Esther her mother’s maiden name and all Esther really knew about her grandparents was that they’d owned a bookstore stocked with ordinary books both new and used... unless you knew the right combination of phrases to gain admittance to the back, where the stock was decidedly different. This was how Abe had met Isabel, he was visiting from New York, she was home after graduate school to take over the family business.

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