Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson Read Free Book Online Page B

face. “Youcan’t send me away to the sorcerers. It was a sorcerer who did this.”
    “Why, pray tell, would a sorcerer free a grimoire, knowing it would be destroyed? Those spells are gone now. No chance of getting them back, and all the sorcerers are weaker for their loss.”
    He was right. There was no reason for a sorcerer to have done it. But she knew that what she had sensed had been real, and if he wouldonly believe her . . .
    “There was something wrong last night,” she blurted, grasping at a memory. “There weren’t any wardens on patrol aside from the Director. I didn’t see anyone in the halls. It was a spell—it must have been. You can check the logs, ask the wardens. Someone else must have noticed.”
    “Lies and more lies.” With satisfaction, he spat on the ground outside the cell.
    Terror seizedElisabeth. She had the sense of wandering into a dark wood and suddenly realizing that she was lost with no hope of finding her way. Finch was never going to believe her, because he did not want to. Her guilt was the best gift he had ever received. The Director had chosen to love Elisabeth, not him, and finally he had an opportunity to punish her for it.
    “An idiot, you are,” he was saying. “Alwaysthought so. Irena never believed me, claimed you had promise , but I knewyou weren’t worth the trouble of room and board, ever since you were a fat little babe, filling the library with your squalling.”
    Irena. That was the Director’s name? She had died without Elisabeth even knowing it.
    “I’m telling the truth,” she whispered again. Her face prickled, hot with humiliation. “I smelled sorceryin the library. A smell like burnt metal. Aetherial combustion. I swear it.”
    His lip curled in a sneer. “And how would you know that smell?”
    “I—last spring, when—” She cut herself off, feeling ill. If she explained that she’d snuck into the reading room and spoken to a magister, she would only make things worse. She looked down and shook her head. “I just know,” she finished weakly.
    “Read itin a grimoire, no doubt,” he growled. “One you shouldn’t have been reading, filling your head with the words of demons. Are you consorting with demons, girl? Have you begun dabbling in sorcery—is that how you know?”
    She retreated in bed until her back thumped against the wall. “No!” she cried. How could he accuse her of such a thing? She had sworn her oaths, just like him. If she broke them byattempting sorcery, she would never become a warden, never be permitted to set foot in a Great Library again.
    “We’ll find out soon enough.” He turned away, lifting the torch from the wall. “I’ve heard what the Magisterium does to traitors. Their interrogations are worse than torture. When they’re finished with you, girl, you won’t be fit to sweep the library’s floors.” The light began to recede,taking his shadow with it.
    Elisabeth scrambled free of the blanket and stumbled to the cell door, gripping the bars. “Stop calling me girl,” she called after him. “I’m an apprentice!”
    There came a dreadful pause. “Are you, now?” Finch asked, his voice ugly, full of relish.
    His torch bobbed away, leaving her in darkness. Slowly, she reached for the key around her neck, the key she hadn’t takenoff in the three and a half years since the Director had given it to her, and grasped only emptiness.
    There was nothing there.
    •  •  •
    Elisabeth’s days blurred together. The Great Library’s dungeon lay deep underground, far from any glimpse of sunlight, and she was alone. She rested on her cot listening to the scufflings of rats and booklice, grateful for their company. Without them a thick,suffocating silence descended over her cell, tormenting her with strange imaginings.
    Finch didn’t visit her again; neither did Master Hargrove. At regular intervals, torchlight flooded the corridor and a warden came to shove a tray of food beneath the cell door. Less