Chapter 16: Nobody Gets Through

"Run up," Ansgar said. "Don't stop for anything they say."

We took the spiral at a dead run with the Ledger clutched against my ribs.

The first Warden met us at the third turning, staff raised.

Every white cloak was stitched with the same bright thread, and every thread ran back to one knot at the collar.

One knot held the rest.

I let go of it.

All twenty clasps opened at once.

Twenty white cloaks slid off twenty shoulders and slumped down the stairwell in a rush of cold wool.

The man in front tripped on his own hem and went down on one knee.

The one behind swore, and the lanterns swung wild.

Ansgar's shoulder went into the nearest staff before it could fall on me, and I heard something in him crack.

"Go," he said, through his teeth.

We went.

Out through the third reading room and the great dark hall, and through a servant's door that Ansgar broke with his boot.

Bells clanged on every wall, and the gate had already been chained.

"Up," I said, and pointed.

An iron ladder climbed the Archive's side to the roof.

We ran across slate and snow with the Academy's lights spread below us.

We jumped a gap between the Archive and the dormitory wing, and I didn't look down.

At the end of the dormitory roof a squat tower stood against the stars, with open louvres at the top and a great bell inside.

Ansgar found the trapdoor in the floor of the bell loft and dropped us through.

It was a low timber room, black as a barrel.

The great bell hung above us in its frame, and below it the Academy was hunting.

We stayed still while boots rang in the court.

A voice shouted that they should search the east tower.

Then the voices drew off, and there was only wind through the slats, and Ansgar's breath, harsh and uneven.

"You're hurt," I said.

"A rib. Maybe two."

"Let me see."

"It's not..."

"Shirt," I said.

He took it off.

I put my palm on the bruise already purpling along his side.

He had taken that for me.

I pressed a little harder, and he breathed out through his teeth and did not pull away.

For weeks he had taught me in the yard with Hedda watching, and never once crossed a line I'd drawn.

None of it gave my grandmother back her shuttered years.

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