The Palace of Glass (20 page)

“For a time, I thought it was impossible. The
Readers bring in their apprentices young. You've met some of them. The Readers teach them the old ways, molding them in their own image. When, by chance, I happened to find you before anyone else, and understood the depth of your talent, I knew what I had to do. I protected you from discovery as long as I could, so you would grow up outside the system. I hoped it would be enough.”

“Then Mr. Black found out about me,” Alice said, thinking back.

“Yes, my protection was fraying. And instead of reporting back to Geryon, Mr. Black sold the information to Esau. My power kept Esau's fairy, Vespidian, from simply taking you for himself, but when your father left on the ship, I could no longer shield him.”

“Esau found my father, on the
Gideon,
” Alice said, chest clenching. “And he assumed I was with him.”

“Yes,” Ending said. “After that, I knew I had to bring you here, ready or not. So I told Geryon I'd found you, and he arranged the rest.”

“You never told me any of this,” Alice said.

“I wasn't sure what you would do if I did,” Ending said. “Have you considered that
I
was never sure I could trust
you
? The wrong word in Geryon's ear, and things might have gone very badly.”

Alice was silent. Ending yawned, fangs gleaming.

“You want me to be your Reader?” Alice said.

Ending nodded. “Now do you believe me when I say our interests are aligned?”

“I think,” Alice said, “I do.”

“Then finish the spell.”

Alice put her hand back on
The Infinite Prison,
feeling the tiny growl of static. She closed her eyes and went back to work.

THE INFINITE PRISON

A
LICE EDGED UP
TO
the study door, red book under one arm, Ashes sticking close by her heel. Her stomach felt queasy, and her heart was already hammering.

One chance.
She tried to keep her breathing regular.
One chance to turn the tables on him once and for all.
She closed her eyes and replayed the image of the
Gideon
's destruction for the thousandth time, fanning the anger in her chest to white heat. She pictured all of the terrible things she'd wanted to do to Geryon, recalled every minute she'd spent listening to him and pretending she didn't know he was a murderer.

One way or another, this is going to be the end of it.

She raised her hand to knock on the door.

“Alice,” Ashes blurted. “I don't know what you and Mother have cooked up, but it's not too late to back out.”

“Yes,” Alice said quietly, “it is.”

Ashes rubbed his head against her ankle. Alice blew out her breath and knocked on the door.

“I've brought Alice,” Ashes said.

“Very well,” Geryon's voice came through the wood. “Alice, come in. Ashes, you are dismissed.”

“You don't want me to stay?” Ashes said, very quietly.

Alice bit back a quip about Ashes' usual habit of abandoning her in a crisis. Instead she scratched him behind the ears and shook her head.

“I'll be all right,” she said.

“You'd better be.” The cat slunk off, looking miserable.

Alice opened the door and walked down the short hallway. It led past the vault room, which housed Geryon's most dangerous books, past the padded chamber where she'd first practiced finding her threads, to the study, where Geryon waited behind a cracked door.

Alice paused. She had to get the book into place without Geryon noticing the switch. Taking hold of her threads, she pulled a couple of dozen swarmers into being around her. Four of them got into a square, and she laid the red book on their backs.

Here goes nothing.

Leaving the swarmers behind for the moment, she pushed the study door open and went inside. Geryon sat at his desk, examining a book by the light of an oil lamp. He looked up as she came in, and gave her a brief smile absolutely devoid of humor.

“Hello, Alice,” he said. “You look like you've been in the wars.”

The ice giants had stitched up the holes in her coat, but there was no disguising the fact that it had been six days since Alice had washed, or changed her clothes, or slept in her own bed. Her hair was a tangled rat's nest, thick with dirt and ash, and her skin was smudged with grime and sweat. The ice-bandages had melted, leaving her mottled with half-healed cuts and bruises.

“Mr. Wurms tells me you went off into the library,” the old Reader went on, glancing back at the book on his table. “Would you care to explain yourself?”

“It's a long story, sir,” Alice said stiffly, letting a little bit of her nervousness into her voice.
He expects me to be afraid, after all.

At the same time, she looked around for the red book that matched the one Ending had given her, but she couldn't see anything that seemed close. There were
hundreds
of books in the room, piled against the walls and tossed carelessly into corners.
If it's buried under something, I'll never get to it!

“I daresay,” Geryon said. “I'm listening.”

Calm down. It has to be easy to get to, if it's such an important defense. He wouldn't leave it under a pile.
Geryon was now looking down at his desk, and Alice risked turning her head.
There
it was, behind her, on a side table just beside the door. She took a step sideways, putting her body between it and Geryon.

“I heard a rumor,” she said. “That there was a lost book on the other side of one of the portals.”

Geryon looked up. “Heard a rumor from whom?” he snapped.

“Isaac.” The lie came easily.
I just have to keep him talking . . .

Behind her, under her careful mental direction, the four swarmers crept into the room with the trapped book on their backs. The rest of the swarmers followed, a flowing black mass, moving slowly so their claws wouldn't catch on the carpet.

“Isaac told me about it,” Alice invented. “He said that he'd eavesdropped on his master trying to figure out how to get to it through one of our portals.”

“And you offered to get it for him?”

“No, sir!” Alice said. “Please believe me. I was going to get it for
you
.”

The swarmers had maneuvered the book to the base of the side table. Two of them climbed up one side of it, claws scratching as they dug into the wood. Alice pretended to cough to cover the sound.

“Why would you do that?” Geryon said. “Instead of just telling me what you heard?”

“I . . .” Alice hesitated, as though she were about to cry. Her head throbbed. The pressure of trying to direct the swarmers while keeping a straight face was like trying to think in three different directions at once. “I knew you were angry with me. After the century fruit. I thought . . .”

The two swarmers made it to the marble tabletop, scurried around the real red book, and started pushing. It slid easily over the polished surface, and just as it was about to fall, Alice brought her hands up to cover her face, the motion drawing Geryon's eye. Behind her, the book fell among the swarmers, whose rubbery bodies silently absorbed the impact. She had to bear down hard to prevent them from making
quirks
of triumph.
Now for the difficult part.

“Spit it out,” Geryon said, disgusted.

“I thought I could make it up to you by getting the book,” Alice said, sniffing. “I just wanted you to be happy with me again. And when you said you were going away, I thought . . . maybe this was my chance.”

The swarmers couldn't climb and carry the book at the same time. Alice had six of them stand side by side, and four more clamber on top of those, and so on, forming a ramp. But the little things weren't tall enough.
I need more.
Carefully, very carefully, she pulled on their thread, letting more of them appear around her feet. She locked eyes with Geryon, silently willing him to hold her gaze.

It worked, and he continued to glare at her, tugging absently on one of his long sideburns. Then, suddenly, he got to his feet. Alice's heart double-thumped.
Did he see them?

“Alice Creighton,” he said. “You are a terrible liar.”

“S . . . sir?” Alice didn't have to fake the quaver in her voice.

“I met with my fellow Readers,” Geryon said, looking down at her from his full height, “to determine what happened in the matter of Esau's death. We . . . inquired. Do you know what we found?”

“No, sir.” Alice took a step back, as though terrified, the better to obscure the swarmers from Geryon's view.
There were enough of them now to form a ramp all the way to the top of the table, and four of them started shoving the book up across the backs of their fellows.

“I always thought your story was fishy,” Geryon said. “You were never clear on exactly how you'd defeated Torment. A gang of apprentices, defeating a labyrinthine? Unlikely.” He leaned closer. “I know you had help.”

“I . . . I'm not sure what you mean, sir.”

“Don't play stupid.
Someone
helped you through that labyrinth. We couldn't trace who it was, but I have my suspicions.” He grinned again, showing his teeth. “You've always been friendly with this
Isaac,
but I see it goes further than that. Tell me, what has Anaxomander promised you and Ending for turning on me?”

“I don't know what you're talking about!” Alice said desperately. “Ending helped me in the labyrinth, I should have told you that, but she asked me to keep it secret, and I didn't see the harm—”

“Didn't see the
harm
in keeping secrets from me? Don't expect me to believe that.”

The swarmers pushed the book onto the table, edging it back into position where the real book had been. As they were setting it down, one edge slipped on the slick marble, and it dropped into position with a slight
thump
.
Geryon's eyes flicked over. Alice dropped to her knees and began to sob loudly. She released the thread, summoning a particularly loud moan as the swarmers vanished with faint
pops
.

“I'm sorry,” she bawled as she hadn't done for real since she was four years old. “Please. Don't hurt me.”

Geryon's eyes narrowed. “Is this supposed to arouse my sympathy?”

“I just . . . Ending said . . .”

“I don't know what game the two of you are playing,” Geryon said, walking past her, “but I'll soon find out. That treacherous cat will not be able to help you
here
. And then we'll have the truth of where you went while I was away.”

He went to the side table and frowned for a moment at the red book. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Then he snatched it up and flipped the cover open.

“I can see,” he muttered, “that I made a mistake with you—”

Then his expression changed to a wild anger, and he dropped the book as though it were a poisonous snake. He rounded on Alice, who had gotten back to her feet.

“You—”
he shouted.

Alice took a step back. Something formed in the air
around Geryon, a sphere just a bit bigger than he was, translucent at first but rapidly solidifying. It was a mirror, a curved one, like an enormous drop of mercury, and Alice could see herself reflected huge and distorted in the outer surface.

“Alice!”
Geryon's shout was twisted, like he was speaking into a malfunctioning loudspeaker.
“You
stupid
girl! You don't knooooooo—”

The voice rose into a scream, not a human shriek but the sound of metal twisting against metal. It climbed higher, through fingernails-on-a-chalkboard and into an impossible, inaudible vibration that bypassed the ears and clawed at the inside of Alice's head.

Something flickered across the surface of the sphere. A crude face, two black holes for eyes and a slash for a mouth, bent into a slight smile.

“Alisssss . . .” It wasn't Geryon's voice. Static buzzed and popped, drawing the word out into a hiss. “At lassssst . . .”

The metallic sphere bent, twisted, as though something were pushing on it from the inside, and the face vanished. The air was hot and tasted of ozone, and bolts of lightning flickered between the sphere, the desk, and the walls.

Then, when the phantom sound had convinced
Alice
that her head would pop like an over-inflated balloon, it all stopped at once. The sphere shrank to a point above the book, then disappeared, and the trap-book snapped itself shut and landed neatly in the chair where Geryon had been sitting. The lightning vanished, leaving only scorch marks on the furniture. Alice slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, her legs suddenly too weak to support her.

It . . . worked?
She blinked.
Did it work? What was that other voice?

But it must have worked.
If Geryon had
escaped,
he'd already have torn her limb from limb.
It worked. It
worked
!
He was stuck, trapped where he couldn't hurt anyone until
she
chose to let him out.
I got him!

“That,” she said in a weak voice, “is what you get for hurting my father.”

She'd imagined saying that would be more satisfying.

The outer door of the study opened. Mr. Black rushed in, with Ashes hot on his heels.

“What in all the hells was
that
?” the big servant yelled. “Master? Girl?”

“Alice?” Ashes said.

“I'm here,” Alice said from her position by the side of the door. She struggled to her feet.

“What
happened
?” Mr. Black said. “Where's the master?”

“You felt it?”

“Of course I felt it,” Mr. Black said. “I should think everyone within a thousand miles who has an ounce of magic in them felt
that
.”

“It
was
rather hard to ignore,” Ashes said. “Was Geryon here?”

“He . . . was.” Alice thought very quickly. “He was investigating that book. I think . . . there must have been some kind of accident.”

“Oh, no.” Mr. Black's face, as much of it as was visible behind his wild hair, went pale. “Oh, that's not good.”

“I'm going to take it to Ending,” Alice said, snatching up the trap-book. She could feel the spell inside it now, humming away, power crackling across her fingers. “She'll know what to do.”

“Wait,” Mr. Black said as Alice ran past him, book clutched to her chest. “You can't trust that bloody cat, not if the master's gone! Alice!”