Cautious, she reached out her hand, brushed her fingertips against timber—and a crackle of glimfire skittered spider-like in warning. With a startled gasp she leapt back, dazzled by the glimpse of scarred, ancient wood and an age-mellowed brass handle. Raging through her, a chaos of impressions, snatches of magework, the intricate threads of the ward. Beneath her skin the binding shivered, a faint promise of pain.

Spinning round, she bolted.

Returned to the third floor landing, she scrabbled for the beeswax and rag. Safety and sanity lay in the humdrum task of polishing.

Rumm found her there scant minutes later.

“Mage Lindin,” he said, weighed down by a laden tea tray and halting a few stair-treads below her. “You are slow in your task. Finish it, quickly. Have you forgotten the library must also be tended?”

“No, Master Rumm,” Barl murmured, glancing up, terrified he’d hear how breathless she was, see the guilty flush in her cheeks, and demand that she explain herself forthwith.

But his gaze was pinned sideways to Lord Danfey’s closed doors. Behind his frown, the master servant was worried.

“Be sure you’re gone when I come out again,” he said, not looking at her. “Or I’ll have to make a dilatory report of you to Councillor Danfey upon his return.”

She hastily burnished the already-waxed newel post. “Yes, Master Rumm. I’m sorry, Master Rumm.”

Not listening, either, he continued to the closed apartment doors and adroitly let himself in without dropping his lordship’s tea and cakes.

As the door clicked shut, Barl thumped her damp forehead to the carved timber.

Oh, Remmie. That was a near one.

Mouth dry, palms damp, she wrapped the waxy rag round the tin then made her way on shaking legs down the staircase. In her blood, on her skin, she could still feel the snap and sizzle of Morgan Danfey’s magic. What a mercy he’d not barred entry to his workroom with a killing ward. Some mages did. Sometimes there were… accidents. Perhaps she should think twice before further meddling, just in case.

Thinking that, she almost missed her footing, nearly tumbled haggy-scaggy down the last few stairs.

What am I, a coward? If I falter now, if I let danger deter me, then in a few days or a week I’ll wake to find myself no better than Dilys the housemaid, magickless and meek.

Sickened by her moment of weakness, she fetched a duster from the cleaning cupboard, to do sister duty with the beeswax, then hurried to the mansion’s ground floor library. This would be first time she was permitted inside.

“Oh,” she breathed, in the doorway, staring. “Oh, Remmie.”