Chapter 136

The lock was new. Brass, set into the old oak below the latch, with a strip of Crown wax across the keyhole gone dark as a scab after five winters.

“Nobody’s been down since we sealed it,” said Ansel Rook, finding the key among thirty without looking. “The order was to seal it as it stood.”

He broke the wax with his thumbnail and turned the key, and stepped back from the door so that I could open it myself.

I put my hand on the latch. It lifted with the same small catch halfway, like a cough.

Behind me in the passage nobody said anything. Quill with his satchel of copies held to his chest. Master Rook with his keys. Tobias Wynn, Alpha now, who had said good morning to me on the stair when nobody else in that house would. Rowan on his stick. Joss at his elbow, holding the lamp he had asked to carry.

And Caspian, at the back, by the wall, who did not come any nearer to the door when I opened it.

I took the lamp from Joss, and went down.

***