Somewhere in the distance, Jess heard the sonorous noon strikes of Big Ben. “What does he say?”

“Nothing.” Morgan chewed anxiously on her lip, and he saw the moment writing began to appear in the sudden relaxation of her posture. “Ah, there—he says go to the warehouse. You know where that is?”

“Yes.” That didn’t lessen Jess’s sense of unease, not in the least. His father kept the warehouse utterly secure, and the eight of them were walking targets. Why would he send the Library’s most wanted fugitives to his most sacred hiding spot?

He wouldn’t. Not with any good intent.

“Ask him where Liam is,” he said.

“What? Who’s Liam?”

“Just ask.”

After a pause, she read off the reply. “He says he’s at the warehouse,” she said. “Why?”

“Liam’s my older brother,” Jess said. “He’s dead. That means you’re not talking to my father anymore. And we’re not going to the warehouse.”

Jess sat in the shadows outside his family’s town house, eating a hot pie and watching the doorway. He’d been there for two hours, slouched in stinking rags with a nearly empty bottle of gin between his feet. It was cold and misty, and he now understood what the crush of traffic on Blackfriars Bridge had been about; it was all over the street corners, with urchins crying the news. The flexible sheet they sold him had constantly updating stories, war stories, written out quickly by scribes somewhere in a London office. There was a cleverly drawn illustration of soldiers in what looked to be Camden Town, judging by the street signs and shopwindows. They were carrying the Welsh dragon flag and setting fire to buildings as Londoners ran in fear. A few uniformed London Garda were being overrun near the edges of the picture. It was stylized but effective. Chaos, it seemed, had moved on from Oxford and was spreading fast. London was a vast city, but in some ways it was also curiously small, and Jess felt the prickles of unease on seeing those familiar street names and shops burning.

If the Welsh had come this far, they weren’t likely to be stopped now. Street by street, they kept up a relentless push toward Buckingham Palace, though likely the king and the rest of the royals had already sped off to safer strongholds farther north. Parliament would be just as deserted. It would be an empty victory, but an important symbolic one, for Wales.

The Library would be following standard procedure and evacuating all but essential personnel from St. Paul’s. But in the Serapeum there was a major holding spot for confiscated original manuscripts, and there were many volumes on loan there, too. Those would need evacuation. The Library would have to divert troops away from chasing them.

In some very important ways, the chaos of war was a boon to them.

So Jess slouched on the cold pavement, looking like an anonymous soul lost to drink, and watched for any sign of his father. He saw none, nor any trace of his mother or brother or even the servants. The Brightwell household was quiet and cold, though the lights were on inside, and from time to time shadows seemed to pass the windows.