Chantress by Amy Butler Greenfield Page B

family is related by blood to both Scargrave and the King, and he is very friendly with them both; he is the last person anyone would suspect of treason. It is his unassailable position that allows us to meet and plot Scargrave’s destruction.” He pulled his spectacles down and looked at me. “And you come to us, my dear, when our plans are at a critical juncture. Our investigations have revealed that Scargrave is attempting to breed his ravens.”
    I frowned. “You mean, he’s trying to make more Shadowgrims?”
    “Exactly,” Penebrygg said. “Hundreds, even thousands, if he has his way. The more of them there are, the more fear he can spread. Right now they’re sometimes spread rather thin, especially in the far reaches of the kingdom, which is a help to us. But if Scargrave finds a way to fill the skies with them, every street of this country will be under their watch.”
    It was a dreadful prospect.
    “Luckily for us, it’s not easy to breed them,” Nat said. “The phase of the moon has to be right, and they have to be taken off patrolling duty for weeks at a time to fatten up.”
    “And then there’s the question of diet,” Penebrygg said. “They must be fed leaves from the moonbriar tree— Selenanthus selenei —or else none of the eggs will hatch. And that is why the Invisible College has destroyed the only three moonbriar trees known to exist.”
    “So he can’t make more Shadowgrims, after all,” I said with relief.
    “Not at the moment,” Nat said. “But there’s always the possibility that another moonbriar tree will be located. Or that Scargrave will locate some seeds and be able to grow a tree of his own.”
    “Can’t you do anything to stop him?” I said. “Find the trees, or destroy the seed, or . . . or something?”
    “We are doing those things, my dear,” Penebrygg assured me. “Insofar as it is in our power. And it’s largely due to young Nat here that we have stayed a step ahead of Scargrave. I’ve lost count of how many missions he’s undertaken for the IC.”
    “Is that why you took the book from the library?” I asked Nat, hoping this time he would answer me.
    He looked at Penebrygg. “The Council gave us permission to tell her?”
    Penebrygg nodded.
    “Yes,” Nat said to me. “One of our spies told me it was worth a closer look.”
    “Spies?” The IC’s network was more extensive than I had expected.
    “Yes, my dear. We have our spies, just as Scargrave has his,” Penebrygg said. “This particular agent was only able to glance at the book, and he was afraid that if he paid any more attention to it, Scargrave would take notice. Stealing it seemed to be the best option.”
    “Luckily we know the house better than Scargrave himself does,” Nat said.
    This puzzled me. “But it’s his house.”
    “Only since the Devastation,” Penebrygg said. “For centuries before that, it belonged to another family, who endowed it with many hidden stairways and passages. Some of which have been long since forgotten.”
    “But you know about them?”
    “Sir Barnaby does,” Penebrygg said. “He knew the house well as a boy. But he’s a man of goutish tendencies, and it’s impossible for him to do the actual stealing. For that, we needed Nat here.”
    “I only hope the book was worth the trouble,” Nat said. “It’s a palimpsest, and they’re tricky.”
    “A pal—what?”
    “A palimpsest,” Penebrygg said. “That is, parchment from an old book that has been scraped blank and overwritten to make a new book. If you want to read the remnants of the old writing, you need sharp eyes.”
    “Will you show me?” I asked Nat.
    He hesitated. “I suppose we can take a quick look.”
    I followed him over to the desk.
    “Look at the shadows.” He ran a careful finger along the parchment page, and I saw them: very faint lines of writing running under and over the heavy black words of the new text.
    “I can’t read every word,” he said, “but there’s a