Lucie sat as Malcolm picked up his pipe. “I must apologize for how I behaved at the Ruelle,” he said without preamble. He leaned back against the book-strewn table. “For the past ninety years I have believed that Annabel—” His voice cracked; he cleared his throat and went on. “That my Annabel was content in the Adamant Citadel. She was not with me, but I dreamed she might be happy. Might even come back to me. Even if she did not, had she died as Iron Sisters and Silent Brothers die—fading into silence, their bodies preserved forever in the Iron Tombs—I should have gone to lay down near her resting place, that I might sleep by her side for eternity.”

Lucie wondered if he had been up all night—he seemed exhausted, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, the shadows beneath his eyes as purple as the eyes themselves. Long ago, she recalled, when she had been a child, she had thought Malcolm quite thrilling—a dashing and beautiful warlock, with his stark white hair and fine hands. Now he looked as if he had aged twenty years in the past day. As if grief had ravaged his face.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I—I never would have told you of Annabel’s fate in the way Grace did, and if I’d known she was going to do so, I would never have brought her to see you.”

“To be honest,” Malcolm said as he lifted the lid from a tin of tobacco, “I appreciate her bluntness. It is better to know the truth.”

Lucie could not help the surprise that went through her. She recalled Grace at the Hell Ruelle: I told him the truth. Shouldn’t he know the truth?

“That is why I summoned you. I thought you deserved to hear my decision from me.” Malcolm filled the bowl of his pipe with tobacco and tamped it down gently. “I will not help you. Necromancy is inherently evil, and notoriously difficult. Even if I could assist you in compelling Jesse Blackthorn to rise again, I fail to see what would be in the bargain for me.”

It had begun to snow outside; Lucie could hear the soft brush of the flakes against the tent fabric. “But if you could help me raise Jesse, I could—I could help you do the same with Annabel.”