Winter jerked his head downstream, in the opposite direction to which I’d been facing. I nodded and gestured at him to proceed. With his face set in a grim mask, he moved off. For once, he wasn’t marching along like an army colonel. One false move and he’d be on his arse. As entertaining as that might be, the last thing I wanted was for him to bring me down with him.

I followed gingerly, matching him step for step. My light spell continued to illuminate the way but all we could see was more of the same.

We traipsed along for a good eighty metres. We had to be getting close to the end of the building by now. The sceptre might have been taken down to the very bowels of the earth but the wards preventing it from leaving the walls of the library without permission would still hold. It couldn’t be far away. I cursed whoever had sent us on this wild goose chase. If Winter spent his days investigating trivial matters like this, I couldn’t understand why he took his work so seriously. Arcane Branch: what a waste of time. I was just about to tell him so when he stopped abruptly and pointed across the river to a gap in the wall. Some broken bricks were lying underneath it as if it had been created deliberately.

I flicked my fingers, making the illumination spell drift over so we could see for sure. The light hovered, its glow bouncing off the tip of the sceptre, which was barely visible inside the hole. I eyed it thoughtfully. Considering the lengths the so-called thieves had gone to in order to bring the sceptre down here, they hadn’t done a particularly adept job of concealing it. Even with Winter’s locator spell we could have walked right past it if they’d replaced the bricks.

Without waiting for me to say or do anything, Winter leapt over the river, landing with a barely audible thump on the other side. Well, that was a manoeuvre I wasn’t likely to copy any time soon; chances were I’d miss and end up waist deep in whatever nasty gunk was beneath us. I peered down. Whatever was down there, it included some incredibly large objects. Didn’t some heartless people flush baby alligators down their toilets? Was that a long snout or a branch?

My brow creased. Whatever it was, it was moving strangely as if fighting against the flow of water rather than being carried along with it. That didn’t make any sense unless…

I whipped my head up just as Winter reached into the hole in the wall to grab the sceptre. ‘Stop!’ I yelled.

He pulled it out, holding it lightly in one hand and turned to frown at me. ‘What?’

It was too late. There was a faint rumble, almost like distant thunder. If this were Hollywood, there would have been time to make a run for it. Unfortunately, we were in real life. There was barely time to blink before the wall of ferociously churning water hit us.