The Palace of Glass (4 page)

He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up, joints
cracking
and
crunching
like someone chewing a mouthful of popcorn. He was much taller than Alice
would have guessed, his legs long and stick-thin. More dust puffed off his jacket, filling the air with haze.

“Well,” he said, glancing down at Alice with another sickly smile. “Shall we be off?”

HOUSESITTING

S
INC
E
A
LICE'S LABYRINTHI
NE ABILITIES
were a secret from everyone but Ending and Ashes, she had to walk all the way to the entrance of the library beside Mr. Wurms. She pulled open the bronze door and stepped outside into a world of cold and brilliant white.

The new year had come and gone, as unremarked as Christmas. Somewhere out in the world beyond, 1932 was getting started, but Alice felt as far away from that world as if she lived on the moon.
This
was her home now, among the books and the portals, and only these brief passages between them reminded her that there was a world beyond the infinite shelves of the library. And in any case, celebrating a holiday here would feel
wrong,
and
only make her miss her father more than she already did.

It had started snowing in November and hadn't stopped. The forests that surrounded the estate on all sides were robed in white, skeletal trees piled thick with snow. The lawn between the house and the library was buried under at least two feet of the stuff, fine, dry powder that rose in great swirling pale gusts when the wind blew. A path, kept clear by the efforts of Mr. Black, led from the library to the kitchen door.

Ashes hopped up to his customary position on Alice's shoulder, staring at the snow with an exaggerated shudder. “Nasty stuff,” he muttered. “Gets in your fur, and then when it melts you're just miserable.”

“I don't mind it,” Alice said. Today, the wind was blessedly absent, and the sky was a clear, crystalline blue.

“That's because you haven't
got
proper fur,” Ashes growled. “It ought to be done away with.”

“We can ask Geryon to get you a nice warm coat.”

He gave her a withering look, and Alice smirked. She put one hand on Ashes' back to steady him and sprinted ahead of Mr. Wurms. The kitchen door was open, and she slipped gratefully into the warmth.

Mr. Black was waiting for her, a hulking, gigantic figure in coveralls and a dirty cap. His dark curly hair met
his beard and mustache to form a thick black mane, from which his eyes peered out, tiny and suspicious. He grunted what might have been a greeting and turned away.

Alice understood, now, why Mr. Black had never liked her. Before she'd arrived, he'd been the chief among Geryon's servants, but as a magical creature, he would always be inferior in status to a Reader, no matter how young. In the past, he hadn't been shy about expressing his distaste, but since Alice had kept her mouth shut on the matter of Mr. Black's selling information to Esau, the big groundskeeper had treated her with a modicum of respect. Mostly this meant avoiding her whenever he could and speaking in monosyllables when he couldn't.

Now, seeing how he also wouldn't meet her eyes, Alice wondered if he was afraid of her too. With her threads coiling at the back of her mind, she certainly was no longer afraid of
him
; he might be big and tough, but he wasn't as strong as Spike or as indestructible as the Swarm.

“Alice,” he muttered. He didn't call her “girl” anymore, either. “And the furball. I thought you were banned from the house after that business with the slippers.”

“I am here,” Ashes said primly, “at the master's invitation, on Mother's behalf.”

Mr. Black grunted again and glanced at the door, where Mr. Wurms was just entering. “Come on, then. He's waiting.”

The two armchairs in Geryon's study had been pushed aside, so Alice and the others had to line up in front of him, like troops being reviewed by a general.

Emma was already there, standing straight-backed, with every indication that she would be willing to do so until she collapsed from exhaustion. She was a skinny, freckled girl, taller than Alice, with a painfully blank expression. Unlike Mr. Wurms and Mr. Black, she was human, and had once been an ordinary girl with the Reader talent, just like Alice. She'd either refused to become Geryon's apprentice, or failed the old Reader somehow—Alice had never discovered which—and Geryon had
removed
the talent from her. The procedure had left Emma more like a robot than a human, mindlessly following instructions without any will of her own. The thought that this could have happened to her often figured in Alice's nightmares.

Geryon gave Alice a long look as she fell in beside Emma. It had only been a few days since the business with the century fruit, and the promised punishment had
yet to materialize.
Is that what this is?
But then what are the others doing here?

“Alice,” he said. “Gentlemen. I've called you here to inform you that I will be leaving the Library for a time.”

Alice blinked and stood up a little straighter. Geryon hardly
ever
left the estate and never for more than a few hours. It was his fortress, his place of power. All the old Readers were so afraid of one another, in the murderous, twisting games they played, that they'd practically made themselves prisoners within their own defenses.

“I am leaving tomorrow morning, and I will be gone
precisely
one week. I have left an ample supply of power for the house wards until then. While I am not expecting trouble, should there be any difficulties, you should all take shelter in the library.” He looked from Mr. Black to Mr. Wurms, and then to Alice, locking eyes with her for a moment. “Ending will be more than adequate to protect you, I'm sure.”

Mr. Wurms nodded, and Mr. Black said, “Yes, master.”

“Alice, the estate is in your charge until I return.” Geryon's eyes flicked to the two non-humans, then to Ashes. “My apprentice is to be obeyed as though she were myself. Is that understood?”

Alice was sure she could hear Mr. Black grinding his teeth, but he nodded again.

Ashes cleared his throat. “When you say obeyed,” he began, “do you mean—”

“I mean
obeyed,
” Geryon said, a touch of rumbling thunder entering his voice. “Please inform your mother, as well.”

“Yes, sir,” the cat said, flattening himself against Alice's shoulder. His tail flipped back and forth.

“There should not be a great deal to do,” Geryon said, returning his attention to Alice. “I expect to see you on my return, with a full report. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Alice said, working hard to control her voice. “Good luck on your trip, sir.”

“Thank you.” He gave a brief, humorless smile. “That's all.”

Mr. Black stomped back to his basement and Mr. Wurms returned to the library. Emma stood quietly in the main hall, with the blank look she got while waiting for instructions. Alice and Ashes went to the dining room, where the house's invisible servants prepared a meal of sausages swimming in gravy beside a mountain of mashed potatoes for Alice, and flakes of something that was probably tuna for the cat. Ashes ate with every
sign of enjoyment, but Alice worked her way through the food mechanically, lost in thought.

Is this the meeting Isaac mentioned? To investigate what happened at Esau's fortress?
If so, it could be serious trouble.
If Geryon somehow realizes I can use the Dragon's power, or that Ending has been helping me, who knows what he'll do?
She was worried for the labyrinthine, but more worried for herself.
Without her, I'll never find a way to get to Geryon.

“I'm going to bed,” she announced, letting her fork fall with a clatter.

“Don't mind me,” Ashes called after her as she left the room. “I'll just struggle home through snowdrifts taller than my head. All in a day's work for a half-cat!”

Alice's hands were covered in blood, slimy and slick with the stuff. It squelched between her fingers, dripped down her forearms, and pattered to the ground like warm, salty rain.

She was in the forest, among the silent, snow-shrouded trees, beside a stream running fast and cold between icy banks. Her father was there, in his neat suit and his traveling hat, looking down at her gory hands with wide eyes. Alice looked up at him and felt her heart sink.

It's all right,
she wanted to say.
It's not my blood. It'll wash right off.
But she couldn't speak, as if the winter chill had frozen her tongue in her mouth.

Instead, she knelt beside the stream and plunged her hands into it. It was deeper than it looked, deep enough that she couldn't touch the bottom, and for a moment she felt herself teetering on the edge of an unknowable abyss. The water was bitterly cold, and her skin went numb almost at once, but she bore with the chill and the pain, watching the blood stream off her in puffs and gouts.

Finally, she turned around, raising her hands for her father's inspection.
See?
she wanted to say.
All clean.

But her hands weren't clean. Brilliant crimson drops still tumbled from her fingers and splashed silently into the snow.

Furious, and a little scared, she put her hands back into the stream. Her fingers started to hurt, spikes of pain shooting up her arms and into her shoulders. She kept them there until her hands felt like useless clubs, until it felt like her skin would shatter into icy fragments when she moved. She didn't care. Blood kept washing off, swirling eddies of it floating downstream.

At last, when she couldn't bear the pain a moment longer, she lifted her hands. Her fingers wouldn't move, and
she could barely lift her arms. Her skin was still coated in slick blood, steaming in the cold air.

She looked at her father, and found his eyes had shifted away from her. Following his gaze, she saw that the stream had changed. The cold, clear water had thickened and shaded through pink and into red; a river of blood washed off her hands and flowed through the pure white landscape like a wandering knife-cut.

Alice looked from the stream to her hands, then desperately back up at her father.

It's not my fault! It's not!

He didn't look angry. He'd never looked angry, not with her. Just that little frown, the frown that broke her heart, that said he'd expected better. He shook his head, slowly, then touched the brim of his cap and turned away.

Wait!
Alice struggled to her feet and ran after him, blood pattering and steaming beside her.
Wait, wait, please wait!
Her strides stretched, snow swallowing her feet, and something twisted beneath her. Suddenly she was falling—