“The books, Shape…”

“Yes? Oh yes, the books. I have books. A few.”

“And what else do you have?” Carrion said.

The serpentine lights flickered around Midnight’s head. His eyes fixed on Mendelson.

“Or don’t have?”

“You mean the Key?”

“Yes, of course. The Key. What else would I mean?”

“Lord, please forgive me. I don’t have the Key.”

Mendelson waited, fearing that Carrion would come at him; strike him, perhaps. But no. He just stood there, piercing Shape with his hollow gaze.

“Go on,” he said quietly.

“I… I found the men who stole it from you.”

“John Mischief and his brothers.”

“Yes.”

“He escaped with the Key to Efreet and took a boat to the Hereafter. I went after him, and I sank the boat, and thought I would have him—”

“But?”

“The tide was with him. It carried him all the way to the other side.”

“All the way to the Hereafter?” Carrion said, with a little touch of yearning in his voice.

“Yes.”

“How is it there?” he said, almost conversationally.

“I saw very little of it. I was trying to catch Mischief.”

“Of course you were. You were doing your honest best, but he kept avoiding you. Eight heads are better than one, eh? You were outnumbered.”

“I was, Lord,” Mendelson said, beginning to dare think that his master understood the hazards his servant Shape had endured to get all the way to the Hereafter and back.

Carrion went to the largest of the chairs in the Chamber. He sat down in it and knitted his hands together lightly in front of him, as if in prayer.

“So?” he said.

“So…?”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Oh. Well… I almost caught up with him, at Hark’s Harbor.”

“The Harbor? I thought it was destroyed.”

“There are some minor portions remaining, Lord. A lighthouse. A jetty.”

“No ships?”

“No ships. I think those that were scuttled are buried in the earth. Anyway, I saw none.”

“So, go on. You went to the Harbor and—”

“He had an accomplice.”

“Besides his brothers?”

“Yes. A girl. A girl from the Hereafter.”

“Ah! He had an accomplice. And a girl, to boot. Poor Shape. You didn’t stand a chance.”

“No, Lord.”

“So he gave her the Key?”

“Did he? I don’t know. Yes. Possibly.”

“Did he or did he not give her the Key?” Carrion asked, his voice subtly gaining in volume and menace.

Mendelson looked at the floor. His teeth had begun to chatter, though he’d promised himself he would not let them.

“Look at me, Shape.”

Mendelson was afraid to do so. He kept his eyes downcast, like a man confronted by an enraged animal.

“I said: look at me!”

Shape seemed to feel something catch hold of his head and jerk it back, so that he was forced to look at the man sitting before him. An instant later that same power pressed on his shoulders, driving him down onto the mosaic floor with such force that his knee bones cracked like whips.

Carrion’s face looked skeletal, the marks around his mouth (where, according to rumor, his grandmother Mater Motley had once sewn up his lips) like the teeth of a skull; the arid flesh above the line of the fluid close to mummified. Only his eyes had any real life. And that was an insane life, crazed beyond recall.

There was nothing in the world Mendelson Shape wanted more than to be out of the Library at that moment.

“You failed me,” Carrion said.

His voice seemed to resonate in Mendelson’s head, so that Shape was suddenly and sickeningly aware of the form of his own skull, of the death’s head he carried just out of sight behind his skin.

“I’m sorry. I did all I could. I swear.”

“What was the name of this girl?”

“I heard only one name. Candy.”

Carrion’s upper lip curled at the very idea of sweetness. “Would you know her again if you saw her?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Then it seems I must let you live, Mendelson. You have dealt with this girl. Presumably you know something of her nature?”

“Yes. I believe I do,” Shape said, through his chattering teeth. He wanted desperately to look away from Carrion’s face, but the Lord of Midnight held him there.

“I think she probably has the Key, don’t you?”

“But Mischief—”

“Gave it to her.”

“I didn’t see such a thing, Lord.”

“But he will have done so.”

“If I may ask… what makes you so sure?”

“Because he’s like you. He’s tired of the chase. He wants somebody else to be the object of my eye, at least for a while.” Carrion paused for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. The cherubic beasts, roused from their roosts by the sound of the torment below were circling in the Library vault, enjoying the spectacle.

Finally, Carrion said: “You have to go back and find me this girl.”

“But, Lord—”

“Yes?”

“She came here.”

Carrion rose from his seat. “You saw her, here?”

“No. I saw the tide carry her away.”

“So she could have drowned! She could be in the belly of a mantizac!”

He came at Mendelson finally, his hands raised. Filled with a kind of terrible relief that he was getting what he deserved, Shape felt himself lifted up, though Carrion made no contact with him. He was thrown across the nearest table and the books—including Pincoffin’s Rhymes—went flying. Mendelson was held down by an invisible force, so strong it kept his breath from coming freely. He heard his breastbone creak.

“Listen to me, Shape,” Carrion said. “Your brothers are dead for their failures, and you will join them in the lime pit if you do not succeed in this last venture. Do you understand?”

Mendelson could barely manage a nod.

“Find me this… Candy. If she’s dead, find me her body. I can interrogate the dead if I need to. I want to know what kind of creature she is. The tide carried her, you say?”

“It seemed that way,” Mendelson said.

“That’s strange. After all that happened, I’m sure Our Lady Izabella would drown most souls, rather than carry them here.”

Carrion took his eyes off Shape for the first time in several minutes, and Shape felt the weight of the power upon him relax somewhat. “There is something strange here,” Carrion said, half to himself. “Something mysterious.”

“How will I find her, Lord, in all the islands?”

“You will have help for that,” Carrion said, his wrath apparently quenched. “Go down to the kitchens. Eat. Wait for word from Naw. I will see you again when I have some clue…”

“Yes, Lord.”

“A girl, eh?” Carrion said, as though amused at the notion.

Then he moved away, and was enveloped by the darkness.

The bone-cracking weight removed from his chest, Shape rolled off the table, gasping for breath.

In the vaulted ceiling above, the vile cherubs were still circling, chattering to one another as they went, excited by the violence they’d just witnessed.

Mendelson ignored them. He hauled himself up to his foot and stump, and waited a few moments until the ache in his chest subsided.

Then he hobbled to the door and headed away down to the kitchens, promising to himself he would burn his few books when he went home, for fear they would put him in mind of the terrors he had just endured.