Geryon was waiting for her in his study, as usual. He was reading something, and Alice thought he looked troubled, but his face smoothed into a friendly mask as soon as he looked up at her.

“Good morning, Alice.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“Are you recovered from your trial yesterday?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent.” Geryon tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You’ll be in the library with Mr. Wurms today, at least for now.” His eyes flicked to his desk and the papers there. “I may have something for you to take care of later on.”

“Yes, sir.” Alice hesitated. Geryon didn’t like it when she asked too many questions, but the guilt churning in her gut wouldn’t be assuaged unless she did something. “I wanted to . . . ask you something. Sir.”

Geryon’s expression was impassive, but his hard eyes fastened onto hers and didn’t let go.

“Oh?” he said, after a moment of pointed silence.

“It’s . . .” She paused, then spoke in a rush. “It’s about my father.”

“I see,” Geryon said.

“It’s just that you said you would look into what happened to him, to find out for certain. I know his ship went down, but we don’t know why, or whether he was really on it.” He promised that, after the Dragon incident. “And I’ve been here six months, and . . . I wondered, I mean if you’d . . . learned anything.”

Another, longer silence. Geryon shook his head. His expression was compassionate, but it didn’t touch his eyes, which were dark and hard as tiny marbles.

“I have put inquiries in motion, as we agreed,” he said, “both for your sake, and to discover how the other Readers learned of your existence in spite of my protection.”

Alice swallowed. She knew at least part of the answer to that last question—Mr. Black had betrayed her to Vespidian and his master, Esau-of-the-Waters. But that wasn’t the whole story; Geryon had said there were other old Readers after her as well. Esau had wanted her badly enough to send Vespidian to the Library after her, but she had no idea if he’d also been involved in her father’s disappearance. Nor, for that matter, did she know why she was so important to the old Readers, except that apprentices were hard to come by. But that can’t be all.

At any rate, she’d promised not to tell Geryon about Mr. Black, in exchange for the traitorous servant’s cooperation in trapping Vespidian so that Alice could interrogate him. And because if Geryon found out, he’d have Mr. Black killed. Mr. Black had betrayed and hurt her, but Alice wasn’t sure she was ready to condemn him to death with a word.