Chapter 148

Lyra sent for me through Bram, which she had never done.

He came up the archive stair at the end of the second day after Isadora, with the dart’s white scar showing above his collar, and stood in the doorway as he stood everywhere now, half in and half out, so that nobody could say afterward he had left his post.

“She says she’ll talk,” he said. “About the pale one’s house. To you, and the King, and whoever writes it down.” He looked at the floor. “She says tonight, before she loses her nerve. She says to tell you those were her words.”

***

So we came to her, because she would not come down.

My room over the archive was warm and smelled of the stove and of the paper below. Lyra sat on her cot under the window with her boots on and a blanket round her shoulders, though the room was hot, and her hands knotted in her lap. Quill set up at my table with a lamp and a fresh book. My father took the chair by the stove, because I offered it to him. Rhys stood by