Chapter 8: Lantern Square

Doran was shouting for his wardens before the clerk hit the step.

I dropped to my knees in the street, and I did not feel it.

I got both hands around the bolt and the wound, and I called the gift as hard as I could.

It came slowly this time, because I had eaten only one good meal.

I held on until the bleeding stopped and the lung under my palm drew a clean breath.

The clerk gasped and opened his eyes.

"The page," he whispered. "Don't let them take the page."

Then he fainted, and a warden carried him in.

Doran had already pulled the sheet out of the gutter.

The wardens had chased a figure across the rooftops and lost him in the chimneys.

The page was torn across the top, so that only the lower half survived.

It was written in a priest's tight hand, and at the bottom were two signatures side by side, and a wax seal with a hawthorn branch.

*Marit Ashdown.*

*Aldous Marchbanks.*

I stared at them.

"What kind of paper is this?" I said.

"I don't know," Doran said slowly. "The top is gone. It was torn on purpose."

"Why would they sign together?"

He looked at me for a long moment and did not answer.

I put the page in my coat, next to my mother's ring, and I felt the whole world shift a little under my feet.

The seventh day came two days later.

The bonesetters had both looked at my knees and agreed on the same terrible plan, and the first would come after the inquiry.

Doran told me not to go to Lantern Square.

I went anyway, in a plain brown cloak, on his arm and my crutch.

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