Chapter 2: The Ledger of Wishes
The man behind the desk smiled at Mira the way a spider might smile at a fly, if a spider wore a velvet coat and kept a quill tucked behind one ear.
"Miss Ashworth," he said, before she had said a single word to identify herself, before Kade had even finished pushing open the tall black door marked with a symbol that looked like a book swallowing its own pages. "How wonderful. We so rarely get a wisher who comes to visit the Ledger in person, on her very first night, no less. Most of them wait until they're desperate."
"I'm not desperate," Mira said, which was a lie large enough to be visible from orbit.
"Of course not." His smile widened by exactly one polite degree. "I'm Corvain. Ledger Keeper of the Threshold. And you, my dear, are the most interesting entry I've recorded in a decade."
That conversation happened roughly ten minutes after the bell had rung a second time in the hall, and Kade had gone very still, and Mira had understood, with a lurch in her stomach, that someone from her own world had followed her through the amber door.
Kade had not let her stop to process that information. He had grabbed her sleeve and pulled her through three more corridors, past a courtyard where the upside down trees rustled without wind, and into a round chamber lined with shelves of leather bound books that stretched up into darkness so high Mira could not see a ceiling. Every book had a spine the color of old honey, and every spine had a name burned into it in golden letters. Names she almost recognized. Names, she realized with a chill, of people. Wishers.
"Whose name is on the second wish," Mira had asked, hurrying to keep pace with Kade's longer stride. "The one that rang tonight."
"I don't know." Kade's jaw had been tight, his eyes fixed straight ahead. "The Ledger doesn't announce it to wardens. Only to the Keeper. Which is why we're going to see the Keeper."
Which brought them here, to this round room, to this man with his spider's smile and his quill and his desk stacked with books that all seemed to be watching her.
"Show her the entry," Kade said. It was not a request.
Corvain's smile flickered, just slightly, the way a candle flickers when a door opens somewhere in the house. "Warden Thorn. Always so direct. Very well." He snapped his fingers, and one of the honey colored books floated down from an impossible height, landing open on the desk with a soft thud, its pages riffling on their own until they stopped on an entry written in looping golden script.
Mira leaned over the desk before she could stop herself.
MIRA ASHWORTH. Wish recorded: to disappear from an assignment and never think of history again. Entered eight minutes past nine, local time. Deadline: three full moons from entry.
Below it, in ink so fresh it still looked wet, a second line.
UNKNOWN. Wish recorded: to bring her back. Entered twelve minutes past nine, local time. Deadline: three full moons from entry.
Mira read it twice. Then a third time, because the words did not make more sense on the third pass, only heavier.
"Someone wished to bring me back," she said slowly. "Someone from home knows I'm gone. And they wished for it. Which means."
"Which means they're here too," Kade finished, his voice flat. "Somewhere in Veylorien. Right now."
Corvain steepled his fingers, looking delighted in a way that made Mira's skin prickle. "Two linked wishes, entered within minutes of each other, on the same night the door had been sealed for a century. Do you have any idea how rare that is? The magical energy alone from a paired entry like this could power the Threshold Wards for a decade. I haven't seen anything like it since." He stopped himself, and for the first time something behind his polished expression looked almost sad. "Well. Since a very long time ago."
Mira thought, distantly, that there should be a rule against government officials looking that pleased with themselves in the middle of a crisis. Back home, the closest she'd ever come to this particular flavor of unsettling cheerfulness was the vice principal who handed out detention slips like party favors and seemed to genuinely believe he was doing everyone a favor.
"I don't care about your wards," Mira said. "I care about finding whoever came after me. Who is it. Where are they."
"Ah." Corvain closed the book with a small, satisfied snap, the way a man closes a business deal he is pleased with. "That, I'm afraid, is not information the Ledger simply hands out. Names are earned, Miss Ashworth, not given. If you want to know who followed you, you'll need to earn the right to read the rest of that entry."
"Earn it how."
"By completing a Ledger Trial, of course." Corvain's eyes flicked toward Kade with something sharp and pointed hiding under the pleasantness. "Your warden knows the process. He's overseen a few, back when wardens still bothered."
Kade's hands, Mira noticed, had curled into fists at his sides.
"The trials are dangerous," he said. "And they're rigged in the Ledger's favor. That's the point of them. Corvain doesn't want wishers succeeding quickly. Every day a wish stays unresolved, the Threshold Wards get stronger."
"Every day a wish stays unresolved, Veylorien gets stronger," Corvain corrected, mild as milk. "I would think a boy in your position would appreciate the difference between malice and necessity. Or have you forgotten what happens to wardens when there's nothing left to guard?"
Something passed between the two of them that Mira did not fully understand, old and tired and layered with history she had no context for, and then Kade turned toward her, deliberately putting his back to Corvain.
"We don't need his trial," he said. "There are older ways to trace a linked wish. Slower, but ours. Not his."
"Interesting," said Corvain, not sounding surprised at all. "You'd rather drag her through the Hollow Archive than let me help. How very noble of you, Warden. Or perhaps you simply don't want her spending more time in my company than she has to."
"Can you blame me," Kade said, and for the first time since Mira had met him, there was something almost like real anger under the words, banked low and old.
Corvain's smile did not waver, but something in his eyes did, and he waved one elegant hand toward the door as if dismissing the whole conversation as beneath him.
"Go to your archive, then. Waste your three moons chasing dusty records instead of taking the fast path. But Miss Ashworth." His gaze slid back to Mira, and his voice dropped into something almost gentle, almost kind, which was somehow more unsettling than his sharpness had been. "When you get tired of the slow way, and you will, remember that my offer stands. The Trial isn't as terrible as he makes it sound. I would never let anything happen to my favorite entry in a decade."
Mira did not answer. She let Kade pull her out of the round chamber, back into the corridor, and only once the tall black door had shut behind them did she let out the breath she had been holding.
"He's lying about something," she said. "The way he looked at you. It wasn't just about wishers and wards."
Kade did not meet her eyes. "Everyone in Veylorien lies about something. It's practically a hobby here."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't."
"You know, most tour guides at least pretend to answer questions about local history," Mira said, mostly to fill the silence, because the alternative was thinking too hard about the look Corvain had given him. "Is that a warden thing, or a you thing."
"Would it help if I said it was a warden thing."
"Not really, no."
"Then I'll admit it's a me thing." A ghost of something crossed his face, gone before she could name it. "I've had a hundred years to decide which parts of my own history are worth handing to strangers on their first night here. Forgive me if the answer is still, mostly, none of them."
"I'm not a stranger. I'm linked to your curse now, apparently. That has to count for something."
"It counts for quite a lot, actually," he said, quiet enough that she almost missed it. "Which is exactly why I'm being careful about it."
They walked in silence for a while, the strange gold lanterns flickering overhead, the sound of a market she still had not seen humming somewhere beyond the walls. Mira's mind kept circling back to the second line in the Ledger. Someone had wished her back. Someone had cared enough, or feared enough, to speak a wish with real feeling behind it within minutes of hers. Her aunt did not know real magic existed. Her parents were an ocean away. Which left almost no one who could have been standing close enough to that amber door to make a wish of their own.
Almost no one.
"Kade," she said slowly, stopping in the middle of the corridor. "The shop was closed tonight. My aunt was upstairs making tea. There was only one other person who could have walked in after me."
Kade stopped too, and something in his face told her he had already reached the same terrible, hopeful, impossible conclusion.
"Then we'd better find the Hollow Archive quickly," he said, "because if I'm right about who that entry belongs to, she is going to do something reckless before the week is out. And this world does not forgive recklessness the way yours does."
Behind them, deep in the round chamber they had just left, a second bell began to toll, low and slow, and this one did not sound like a wish being recorded at all. It sounded, Mira thought with a cold drop in her stomach, like a warning.