Hazoth gestured with the book he held in his hands. “If I needed a table boy, or someone to muck out my stables, I could have you with a thought. I could render you mindless and servile. Bind you to my service for the remainder of your life, and do it in such a way you would be unutterably happy, thrilled every morning to rise from your pile of straw and spend another day working for me until your fingers bled. If I wanted that, it would already have begun.”

Malden swallowed carefully. His heart was racing.

“Such a waste that would be, though. You can read. Do you understand how rare that is? Reading is the difference, the mark, of a being capable of thinking beyond its own petty concerns. It is the one thing that truly separates humanity from the beasts. Somehow you have managed the art, and like a trained dog that can count with its paws, you amuse me. So no, I won’t give you a job. Or my protection. But you may have this instead: the greatest treasure I can convey, or at least the greatest that you will be able to comprehend.” Hazoth pressed the book into Malden’s hands.

It was bound in calf’s leather and was duodecimo in size. Gold characters were printed on the spine but in an alphabet Malden did not know.

“Read it at your leisure. I’m sure you’ll find it most edifying.” Hazoth smiled, revealing a double row of perfect white teeth. “You may thank me.”

“Thank you, Magus,” Malden said.

“It is nothing. Now. Cythera—perhaps you will see our little friend out. Take him the back way, so no one sees him leave. I have no doubt Vry is already watching this house and saw him enter. Or,” Hazoth said, turning his frigid eyes on Malden, “did you not consider that when you came?”

Malden had not been told to speak, so he held his peace.

“Come,” Cythera said, and headed toward a door at the far side of the library from which they’d entered. Malden glanced over his shoulder on the way out and saw that Hazoth was no longer in the room.

“A neat trick,” he said as she led him down a side corridor. “This vanishing and appearing. You know it as well,” he added, remembering how he’d first met her, when she appeared out of thin air on the roof of the university cloister.