It was a library, which meant that it was full of tinder. It was also connected to her mother’s study by the narrow flight of stairs that started behind the swinging bookcase, and Ferla’s study was full of silbercow oil. If Lovisa was going to start a small, distracting fire, the staircase was probably a good location.

She ran to the shelves near the swinging bookcase and began pulling books down at random, opening them, tearing out pages and crumpling them, but quietly. Then she began carrying things up the steps on tiptoe and piling them gently, soundlessly, outside her mother’s door: the crumpled paper, the logs and tinder stacked beside the fire, every lamp in the room. There were so many lamps; it took several trips. She poured some of the lamp oil over her mountain of torn pages and logs, and some onto the floor. She tried to cast oil across her mother’s door, but it was hard to know where it landed. Lovisa was shaking with the desperation of having no idea what she was doing. She’d never lit a fire before, not even in a fireplace. Also, she could hear her parents’ muffled voices, arguing in Ferla’s study.

“Why are you here?” said Ferla. “Get out of my study. Go back to bed!”

“The Estillan envoy is coming to dinner,” said Benni. “I want my banker’s box.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Ferla. “You’ll leave that banker’s box here until he comes. I don’t trust you with it. Get out. Get out!”

Lovisa heard a door slam and fled downstairs again, worrying that her father would come to his library next. That stupid banker’s box had been the primary mystery of her life once. Now she didn’t care what was inside it. In the library, she went to the fire, took the ash shovel in one hand and the tongs in the other. Digging into the base of the fire, she scooped bright embers onto the shovel. Then she chose the most boisterously burning log from the fire and grabbed it with her tongs. It was too heavy to lift with one hand. Awkwardly, she supported it with the same hand holding the shovel.