Sibyl Vantreux knocked before she came into the library, at seven on Saturday morning, which was the first time in twelve days that anybody in that house had knocked on a door instead of finding out whether it would let them.
She had not been to bed. Nell read it off her the way she read a room: Friday’s grey dress, the collar wanting a pin, a candle still lit in her hand in a corridor that had daylight in it.
“You are up,” Sibyl said.
“Since four. There’s forty pages of guild engagement on that table and I’ve been through them eleven times looking for a fourth way out. There’s three, and I don’t like any of them.”
“Then we shall not waste each other’s morning.” Sibyl set the candle on the reading table and blew it out, and the smell of it went round the cold room. “I…
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