. . . still, he may have heard.

Alishia wondered why she even cared, but at the same time she knew: her instinct told her that the man brought danger. She hurried back through the maze of books and dust and age, turning corners, desperately relieved when she found a familiar row that led back out to the open area around her desk. Once there she rooted around beneath her desk, closed her hand around the hilt of the old knife wedged in between two piles of books beneath the scored wooden top. And she gasped as the man walked around the corner.

He was sweating. He must have been running to have arrived so quickly behind her, but what she found more worrying was that he tried to hide this fact. For a second she was undecided—stand with the knife, or let it go and face whatever threat he may pose?

He decided for her. “Nothing,” he growled without even glancing at her, the language obviously alien to his lips. He walked past, so close that she could smell his sweat and fear. He was scared. She wondered whether she smelled the same to him.

Alishia said nothing, even though she could plainly see the book slung under his arm like a recent kill. She watched with a mixture of relief and embarrassment as he paused at the door, picked his bloodred robe from a hook on the wall, shrugged it over his shoulders and left. As he exited into the sun he turned the hood up over his head.

A Red Monk? Alishia thought. She had read passing reference to them in several books, but little was known about them other than they were mad. And deadly. But the man had gone, and Alishia breathed a sigh of relief and thought: Thank my heart. Thank my lucky heart.

ALISHIA CLOSED THE library early that afternoon. The strange experience with the old book-thief had shaken her more than she cared to admit. Besides, nobody would notice, and if they did they would not say anything. And even if they did it would not matter.

The entrance to the library was below the road, and as she climbed the worn stone staircase, Noreela City revealed itself. Many years ago—centuries before her birth—she would have seen spires and arches and domes from the first step, but over the years since the Cataclysmic War they had crumbled into disrepair, or been pulled down when they became unsafe. Now the first she saw of the surrounding buildings was as she mounted the fifth step and the Tumbling Window of the courthouse stared down at her. In her time she had seen many criminals—murderers, rapists, pseudo-magicians—pushed from this high window. Some of them died on impact. Others, the unlucky ones, clung to life for days, bleeding across the stones, untouched and unaided. The really unlucky ones were taken by dogs in the night.