Chapter 102

We spent the night in the loft of the courier house, among the grey books, with the satchel under my head.

It had been Lucien’s idea, while the steward stood at the counter below with his list. Nobody looks up in a courier house, he said. Saskia brought the horses into the house’s own stable by the water, where Rowan’s friend with the bad back charged us for oats we did not eat, and then she sat with her back to the trapdoor and did not, as far as I could tell, close her eyes once.

After midnight Rowan said, very reasonably, that the moon was down and a sensible man would be ten miles off by now.

“No,” I said.

“Lass.”

“If I carry this out of Mirefold in the dark,” I said, “then it’s forty pages a wolf-girl says she found in a cage. Valerian will hold one up in the hall and ask how anybody knows I didn’t write them myself on the road. I would ask it.” I put my hand flat on the leather. “I want somebody who isn’t mine to look at them first. And write down