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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Children's Books
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
An electric new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Hotel Magnifique, which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's book prize. _______A dark academia fantasy filled with crumbling libraries, magical letters and a magnetic rivals-to-lovers romance. ________Seven years ago, Maeve Abenthy lost everything when her father unleashed a terrible, world-destroying magic. Desperate to escape the stain of his crime, she lives under a fake name, never staying in one place long enough to risk discovery. That is until she receives a mysterious letter, containing for impossible words: Your father was innocent. To uncover the truth, she must pose as an apprentice for the illustrious Otherwhere Post. Here, she'll be trained in the art of scriptomancy - the dangerous magic that allows couriers to deliver letters between worlds. But there are some who would prefer the past to stay buried... A dark presence watches Maeve from the shadows, hindering her investigation at every turn. What's more, her infuriatingly handsome mentor knows she's lying about something and time is running out to win him over. It soon becomes clear that to uncover the past, Maeve may have to forfeit her heart - or worse, her future.
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Seitenzahl: 541
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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i‘An epic dark fantasy tale of love, justice, the delicate magic of finding connection, and the complex art of scribing… thrilling, gripping and thoroughly enjoyable’
Kirkus, starred review
‘Inventive worldbuilding… witty banter and reluctant romance… inject levity and depth’
PublishersWeekly,starredreview
‘With delicious layers that readers will love unravelling, this fantastical piece will positively whisk you away’
Booklist, starred review
‘A high stake, deliciously dark tale of a young woman risking it all for the truth. From its brilliant magic to the torturous slow burn romance, TheOtherwherePostmesmerizes’
Lyssa Mia Smith, author of Revelle
‘Unique, whimsical and utterly spellbinding’
Jessica S. Olson, author of A Forgery of Roses
‘This dark academia fantasy features masterful worldbuilding, a wildly interesting new magic system, and a loveable cast of characters’
School Library Journal, starred review ii
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vFor Rogue and West
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Contents
1
Maeve always carried the love letter with her. She knew every ink stroke by heart, that it took twenty-three seconds to unsheathe the brittle paper from the envelope and read the tender words penned by her mother to her father ages ago. It was all she had left of her parents.
Today, however, it sat like a weight at the base of her right pocket.
Tucking her rust-red braid into her coat collar, Maeve hurried up the rain-slicked cobblestones of Widdick’s Close until she crested the hill near her flat.
Autumn air clung like wet leaves to her tongue. Bleak ocean winds beat her cheeks, and the city of Gloam spread out before her: blackened stone university buildings tangled between steep roads that ran together like an ink spill. The city of Gloam in Leyland.
It was such an ugly world.
Maeve imagined she could see the two other known worlds of Inverly and Barrow wrapped over this one like the translucent sheets of tissue she used to package quills. The three known worlds appeared identical if you squinted, but truly comparing them was the same as searching for similarities between a fresh apple and a lump of hearth coal.2
Unfortunate, considering she happened to be stuck in that lump of coal.
She pulled out the love letter, along with a train ticket she’d purchased just yesterday. The ticket took her ages to save for. It granted passage to the south coast of Leyland in exactly one week. In seven short days, she would kiss this decrepit city goodbye for good.
A smile tugged at her lips. She tucked the precious ticket back inside her pocket, then dragged a gloved finger along the love letter’s tattered corner.
She dearly wished she had a single memory of her mother, but Aoife Abenthy had died from a wasting sickness when Maeve was a mere babe. Her father was a different matter entirely.
She’d discovered this letter in his things the week before she lost him, back when she wouldn’t let him walk out the door without slipping her hands over his wiry shoulders and forcing him to hug her twice. Before she learned he was a twisted murderer.
She was only eleven years old. Now, at eighteen, she had lived with that knowledge for too many years.
Her fingers tightened, straining the envelope until it was on the verge of ripping. This love letter might have been written by her mother, but it belonged to him.
“Guess what, Father? I finally saved enough to buy a train ticket. I’m leaving your favorite city in one week’s time. After that, I hope to never spend another minute of my life thinking of you.”
A burst of lightning lit up the gray sky, as if her father were laughing at her. He’d perished in another world, but Maeve was half convinced his spiteful ghost resided here nonetheless, haunting her every step.
Trembling, she tucked the letter down into her pocket, beside the train ticket. Out of sight.3
As much as she wanted to love something her mother wrote, she hated that letter. But she didn’t dare get rid of it. The constant feel of the envelope against her hip bone served as a necessary reminder to be careful to never use her real name. To never speak it. If anyone discovered who she was, they would call the constabulary. Unless the families of her father’s victims came for retribution first.
Maeve took a strangled breath, feeling the sickening weight of his crimes pressing against her lungs—the shame of having to live in a world that he had tarnished.
At least she was leaving in a week. It might prove difficult to run away from the blood in her veins, but she would certainly try her best.
More lightning cracked across the sky, followed by rain. Maeve tightened her scarf. It was a long trek to the Alewick Inksmithy, a quaint, quiet establishment in the southernmost neighborhood in Gloam. Maeve’s eyes watered as she finally entered through the front. The heated shop air was scented with lampblack ink, powdered blotting papers, sealing waxes, and solvents: all the tools one required to pen a letter.
“Is that you, Isla?” Mr. Braithwaite called from the back.
It took Maeve a full second to answer; she still wasn’t used to her latest alias. “Yes, I’m here! And drenched, I’m afraid.”
His cane knocked against the rough-hewn floorboards as he hobbled into the front. A thick scowl deepened the wrinkle lines in his brown, freckled cheeks. “You’re awfully late again.”
She wouldn’t be surprised if her employer had a ticking pocket watch instead of a heart. “Only twelve minutes.”
“Late is late. I thought I would be forced to hunt you down and make you feed Bane.”4
The old nipping mare had a countenance as charming as her master’s. Maeve avoided Bane. She avoided all horses.
Peeling off her gloves, she caught her reflection in the front mirror and frowned. Her damp coat pulled against her wide bust—where the tarnished row of brass buttons almost never remained in their holes—but she was too chilled to shrug it off. The mole above the right corner of her lip stood out like a point on a pallid map. At least with a pinch to her cheeks, she appeared slightly less like a blanched onion.
Maeve came around the counter, pausing at the locked valuables cabinet that had stood empty yesterday.
“Those came in late last night.” Mr. Braithwaite gestured to three left-handed quills hanging inside, their fletching dyed exquisite shades of indigo and violet.
The quills were crafted from molted right-wing feathers, which made them enormously expensive. Most feather merchants gathered right-wing feathers for other uses besides left-handed quills, and the few they sold were usually snapped up by university faculty long before they arrived in Alewick.
Maeve ran a finger over the blisters along her left-hand thumb, dearly wishing feathers weren’t as costly as train tickets.
Tearing her eyes from the case, she took out her favorite quill knife, a small, rusted blade that got the job done faster than most. She tested it against a fingertip. When a bead of blood welled, she licked it off.
“So?” Mr. Braithwaite said a whole half a minute later. “Why were you late?”
Meddlesomeman. “I forgot my hat at home and had to go back for it,” Maeve lied, then reached for a box of molted swan feathers.
“Back for a hat?” Mr. Braithwaite said with a disagreeable grunt. 5He pushed his reading spectacles to his forehead. “Doesn’t seem such an important thing to me, but I suppose I can’t understand the importance of fashion to a woman.” He glanced toward the aged sepiagraph hanging behind the counter, of a pretty young woman, her dark cheeks stained pink. “My Una loved shopping for hats, and I never understood it,” he said, then dabbed tears in his eyes.
Maeve fidgeted, uncomfortable at the sight of him weeping.
A job posting brought her here eight months prior. Mr. Braithwaite had been trying to hire a stockist for weeks; his demeanor likely sent all other applicants fleeing in terror. It was the perfect opportunity, until he confessed in a gut-wrenching tone that Una had passed away.
Lonely people were the ones Maeve watched out for, who recognized the loneliness in her and thought it an invitation. She had almost walked out, but then he offered her the job, and she needed the money more than she cared to admit.
“Una was in Inverly the day it was destroyed, shopping for a new hat,” he said quietly, still staring at the portrait.
Maeve jolted at the mention of Inverly—one of the three known worlds—and dropped her quill knife. She scrambled to pick it up.
He had never told her how Una died.
Mr. Braithwaite didn’t seem to notice her reaction. His eyes were lost in his wife’s face. “Una preferred the Inverly haberdashers, with their colorful spools of thread. She had an appointment to visit one two blocks from Blackcaster Station that very afternoon. I’ve always wondered if she tried running for Leyland and simply didn’t make it.”
Blackcaster Station was no train station. It once housed the two great Written Doors—doors people used to travel back and forth 6between the three known worlds. Once, you could leave a university lecture in Gloam in Barrow, have dinner in Gloam in Inverly, then visit a tavern here in Gloam in Leyland, all in a single evening. Until one terrifying afternoon seven years ago.
“I’m so sorry,” Maeve managed through a tight throat.
She had been in Inverly that afternoon as well, and thinking of it never failed to send her back to the moments of terror she’d experienced—people screaming, everyone running to escape. She was one of the lucky ones—close enough to Blackcaster Station to dart inside and make it through to Leyland before it was too late.
Minutes after she escaped Inverly, the Written Door between the two worlds was burned to cinders, obliterating its magic. Then the fire spread to the other Written Door connecting Barrow and Leyland, burning it as well, stranding thousands on either side. By the time the smoke cleared, everyone had learned the truth: that Inverly was destroyed and everyone inside of it was gone forever. Just like that. Barrow and Leyland were both spared, but with the doors burned, all travel was cut off instantly, stranding everyone wherever they happened to be. Trapping Maeve in godforsaken Leyland all by herself.
In the wake of Inverly’s destruction, the House of Ministers recruited specialists to try to repair the Written Door connecting Leyland and Barrow. The effort was intended to help those stranded in the wrong world to return home, but nothing came of it. Now the only people able to cross between Leyland and Barrow were couriers trained in the magical art of scriptomancy, delivering precious letters to those desperate to hear from their loved ones.
Maeve never hoped for a letter herself. Everyone she loved had been in Inverly.7
Tears burned the backs of her eyes, and the memories of that afternoon threatened to swallow her. When Mr. Braithwaite failed to stop his weeping, Maeve couldn’t stand it anymore. She unwrapped a sheet of tissue from around a quill and tossed it to him, then turned to face the wall.
Breathe, she told herself.
Mr. Braithwaite didn’t mention Inverly again, thankfully. He wiped his cheeks, then stepped to his worktable, where he proceeded to open today’s copy of the Heraldand give Maeve a rundown of the news, along with his delightfully pessimistic commentary.
Professor’s Row was being repaved—twoyearstoolate!The Leyland campus of the university hired new faculty—buttheywereallsnobswithwalletsbiggerthantheirbrains. A tavern in Old Town caught fire, but no one was hurt—amiracleconsideringthefesteringbuildings. On and on it went.
“Ah. There’s actually something interesting from the Otherwhere Post,” he said.
Maeve glanced up. The paper was opened to the back page, where Postmaster Byrne’s newsletter was printed weekly.
“Would you look at this. Old Byrne has announced that the backlog of letters from the months after the Written Doors burned are finally being sent out. My sister wrote me from Barrow some twenty times all those years ago. Wouldn’t it be something to get her letters now?”
“Without a doubt.” At least Maeve knew that none of those old letters were for her.
“It’s good the Post finally sorted out their disastrous infrastructure. God knew how hard it was for Byrne to find enough couriers 8he could teach to scribe. I heard it’s one in a hundred that can pull off the magic.”
It was one in three hundred, but she didn’t correct him. The talk of scriptomancy caused her palms to sweat.
He flipped the page. “One of these days, I’d like to see exactly how scriptomancy works.”
“It would be a sight to behold,” she said, hoping Mr. Braithwaite would drop it. Already, images of her father with a quill between his fingers poured across her mind.
Scriptomancyistheartofenchantinganypieceofexistinghandwriting,fromapennednoveltoascribbledgrocerylist,he always told her with a twinkle in his eye. He was a skilled scriptomancer, and had promised to teach her the art “one day soon,” whatever that had meant. Then he’d given her journals and asked her to fill them, said that scriptomancy required a deep understanding of linguistics and chirography before you were ever allowed to practice. She’d listened fiercely because she’d loved him more than anything in the worlds. Things had certainly changed.
Maeve shoved her father from her mind and set about carving quills. A few minutes passed, and the shop grew strangely silent. Mr. Braithwaite hadn’t made another peep. It was unlike him. Worried something had happened, she turned to find him regarding her with a bewildered frown.
“What did I do now?” She hadn’t cracked a feather or spilled any ink. The front counter was as neat as a pin.
“You’re leaving in a week.”
“Yes, I know. We discussed it yesterday.”
His expression turned grim. “I won’t be able to replace you, and I don’t like it.”9
“Sure you will. You’ll hire a brawny stock boy who likes to smile and can name more parchment substrates than I can.”
“They won’t be half as capable.”
“That’s utter nonsense.” She had neat writing, certainly, and above-average organization, but she couldn’t upsell a customer to save her life. She always tried, though, rather awkwardly.
“Ill-tempered as you may be, you have no idea of the treasure you are to me.”
A treasure? Maeve glanced at his worktable to make sure he hadn’t accidentally inhaled anything, but there were no uncorked solvents.
He called her a treasure, but the reality was, she was a liability. Her father’s legacy made sure of that.
Her eyes dropped to the fine blue veins threading the inside of her wrist. She often wondered if the potential for murder was passed through blood, if evil lurked inside of her now. Even if it didn’t, she was still a risk to Mr. Braithwaite. Her father’s crimes were so disgraceful that everyone in Leyland had reason to hate him. If anyone discovered her identity, this shop would be tainted by association, and nobody would come in. Mr. Braithwaite would lose the shop, the flat above it, even the shirt on his back, and it would be her fault for not quitting sooner. The past eight months had already been too long.
The front door opened, and the grocer’s wife, Mrs. Findlay, bustled inside with a steaming loaf for Mr. Braithwaite tucked beneath her homespun cloak. She dusted a drop of rainwater from the tip of her pink nose. Her inquisitive eyes pierced Maeve. “Ah, Isla. I spotted you from my shop window running in late. Did something happen?”10
Half the neighborhood was too nosy for their own good.
Maeve held up her quill knife. “Would you look at how dull this is? I’ll need to sharpen it in the back straightaway.”
Mr. Braithwaite Retired to his upstairs flat at six o’clock sharp, leaving Maeve to lock up at seven. By half past six, rain lashed the windows. Maeve doubted any customer would brave a storm for a dram of ink, but she’d been asked to stay, and she needed her final week’s pay.
Shucking off her boots, she sidled into the stained shop chair and opened her latest journal until the spine made a satisfying crack.
She drew a contented sigh through her nose.
Regardless of her complicated feelings toward scriptomancy, Maeve kept up with journaling. At first, she used it to record the black thoughts about her father that wouldn’t let her sleep at night. But she eventually grew to need the calming feel of parchment against her palms. Now it was the only piece of her past that she wasn’t willing to part with. Her life often felt like a violent ocean tossing her about, but writing gave her a foothold. A moment to catch her breath.
Mr. Braithwaite thought it strange she had so much to say with ink, considering she volunteered so little with her mouth, but on the page, her words always spilled out in a torrent of meticulous lettering.
Maeve dipped a quill into a thimbleful of lampblack ink, then filled pages with her hopes for her trip south, including a detailed description of her future perennial garden—nestled against a sloped yard, like her aunt’s garden in Inverly, with each flower carefully chosen to attract bees and butterflies. The outside world 11faded as if she were in the clutches of a spell, her presence trapped between quill and parchment.
Her eyes snapped up at a rumble of thunder. The sky had darkened to pitch. Time to go. Maeve locked the shop, then started the long walk back to her flat.
Clouds smothered the moon. The dim gas lamps lining Alewick’s main avenue barely illuminated the streets. She flipped up her collar to shield her neck from the wind off the ocean.
“You there!” someone shouted.
Maeve spun to face a hulking silhouette carved by lamplight. A man with a saddlebag slung across his heart. His grizzled beard twisted in the wind, and his black cloak billowed around him, a storm made corporeal.
There was nowhere to run—they were alone together on the street.
The man strode toward her, and Maeve backed away until her heel caught on a cobble. She braced herself, expecting him to pull a knife.
He held up an envelope instead.
Maeve blinked in surprise. “You’re an otherwhere courier.”
“I am,” he said in a voice half-swallowed by the wind. “This is for you. It’s one of the letters from after the doors burned. Seven years late, but hopefully it will still mean something.”
The envelope was old and tattered and entirely blank.
But it couldn’t be for her. “Are you positive you have the right person?”
He grumbled and forced the letter into her hand. She tried to give it back, but he shook his head. “Like I said, it’s for you.”
Maeve nodded in disbelief. Everyone knew otherwhere couriers never delivered a letter to the wrong person. It simply was not 12done. Regardless of the facts, it seemed impossible that the letter was for her; she’d thought everyone who knew her had been lost in Inverly. This envelope, however, meant that she might be wrong.
She paused at the thought. All the letters posted after the Written Doors burned were from lost family members trying to find one another.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and a confusing tide of emotions moved through her: surprise, pain, then a sharp longing that caught her off guard. It slipped beneath her breastbone, pressing like a blade against her heart.
A black wax seal sat on the envelope’s fold, embossed with a bead-eyed pigeon holding a scribing quill in its sharpened talons: the emblem of the Otherwhere Post.
“Goodnight, miss,” the courier called, then slid into the night.
Not wanting to waste another second, Maeve severed the seal, cracking the pigeon at the neck. She scrambled to unfold the letter.
Dear Maeve,
I’m a childhood friend of your father’s. He visited me in Leyland in those final days and told me a secret that changes everything. Meet me at the mouth of Edding’s Close on the first of the month. Your father was innocent, and you deserve to hear the truth.
—an old friend
2
Maeve ambled along the cliff path the following morning with a splitting headache and two letters tucked inside her pocket. One with her real name scrawled across the top.
Couriers could use scriptomancy to deliver letters with just a first name, but the fact that it was done on her felt unsettling. That courier had found her. All the way in Alewick. She’d stayed up far too late last night worrying about it all, unable to pry her eyes from that letter.
It was indeed seven years old, dated six months after the Written Doors burned—one week after she turned twelve. Edding’s Close was a covered alleyway near Professor’s Row—three blocks east of the Sacrifict Orphanage, where she had lived all those years ago. Only three blocks! It would have been simple to meet with her letter-writer then. They probably waited for hours, and she never showed up. It was cursed luck that she didn’t receive this letter until now.
You father was innocent.
The words felt impossible.
Maeve inhaled stark ocean air and tried to dredge up a good memory of her father—something that didn’t make her want to retch. It was difficult.14
His soft features came to her first: a mess of chestnut hair that never stayed put, wheat-colored skin that smelled of the herbs used in scribing pigments. He had her wide hazel eyes, and callused fingers always ink-stained from hours spent scribing.
She had watched him do just that on their last night together, while she sat tucked like a kitten to his side. Halfway through a scribing, he’d rolled his shirtsleeves, revealing a paragraph of what looked to be notes scribbled along his forearm. Maeve had grazed a fingernail over a word, then pushed her index finger through a moth hole near his elbow. “You have a tear in your shirt,” she’d said.
Her great-aunt Agatha had clucked her tongue from across the room. “See? Your own daughter is noticing how shabby we’ve become.” Aggie came to stand beside Maeve, her knobbed fingers knotting together. “Jonathan, you could be a steward and make twice the pay you do now. You could afford new shirts for yourself and a better school for Maeve if you only spoke up.”
“I have spoken up, Agatha,” her father had said softly. “They offered me a promotion last week, but I decided to turn it down.”
Aggie drew back. “You did what? If Aoife knew …”
Her dead mother’s name caused a painful ripple in the room. Her father looked down at his crow quill. He never angered, always went about the world as gently as a lapping lake, but there was a firmness to his next words. “I told the stewards that I wish to remain in my current role as a scriptomancer. And they agreed, so long as I teach the occasional class. I’m relieved about it all, and I had hoped you would be as well.”
Anger simmered across her great-aunt’s features. “I can’t say that relief is what I’m feeling, Jonathan, but congratulations, I suppose,” she said, then stormed off.15
Her father turned to her. “Don’t listen to your aunt. Save for you, darling, I would give it all up to practice scriptomancy. When you discover what it is you love, you must clutch on to it with your whole heart and never let it go.” His ink-stained fingers then turned liquid, dancing over the toothy vellum as if to prove a point. Maeve watched him write until her eyes grew heavy and she fell asleep against his chest. She woke the next morning already hoping her father would visit again that night.
The same day the Written Doors burned. The day he was lost to Inverly.
In the seven years since, Maeve had gone from the Sacrifict Orphanage to a life of moving between vacant rooms across Gloam, picking up whatever odd job she could find and then leaving before she could catch her breath. Her rules kept her safe: never stay anywhere for too long; never start conversations that couldn’t be ended quickly; never speak to anyone outside of work. All to keep her identity a secret—her father’s identity. The rules were easy to follow, save for that time a boy at a job asked her to drinks at the neighboring tavern. He had clear blue eyes and an easy grin that made her heart skip, but she’d turned him down and quit the next day.
Maeve faced the gray ocean. Already, ominous clouds leaked across the sky like runnels of sealing wax against a crisp envelope. It would be fifty minutes, give or take, until the storm hit.
She pulled out her new letter and drew a finger over the last line.
An old friend.
This friend had likely made a mistake by sending her this letter.
Or maybe they hadn’t.
Maeve tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, considering 16the possibilities. The letter was probably a lie, and she was likely better off to forget all about it. But now that it was in her possession, would she ever be able to forget about it?
If this stranger could somehow prove her father’s innocence, it would change everything for the better. Heavens, it could change her life.
For a breathless moment, Maeve let herself wonder whatif. What if she searched for this old friend? What if she discovered the letter was true? What if she told others? The answers were enough to send her to her knees, and she knew without a doubt that she had to find a way to speak with this person. Whoever they were.
Tucking the letter down her pocket, Maeve started at a clip toward the center of town, until she stood before the sleek black letterbox on Main Street with a bead-eyed pigeon clutching a quill embossed across the front.
There were thousands of these letterboxes scattered throughout Leyland. Once, they were all sunny yellow and painted with the initials L.L.S. for the Leyland Letter Service. After the Written Doors burned, a company came around with gallons of black paint, turning them into the frightful little coffins they were today.
Eight tiny words were etched below the seal:
Postage must be fully paid before depositing letters.
A door rattled.
A middle-aged woman scurried from Alewick Grocery & General with a stack of letters in hand. Maeve stepped back, watching as the woman slid each of her letters through the mail slot before dashing off.
Maeve peered into the general store.
Nosey Mrs. Findlay sorted a display of shaving soaps at the front counter beside a large sign listing postage fees. Four shills 17to merely send a letter wasn’t too obscene, but a whole hallion to commission an otherwhere courier to come out and enchant one felt like robbery.
Ourmenuofspecialtyenchantmentsisvast, the sign read. Usingscriptomancy,ourcourierscanaddemotionstoaletterthatyourlovedonewillfeelintheirhearts,scentstheycansmell,ormemoriesforthelettertoconjure.
There was more tiny writing. Maeve squinted but couldn’t read it from outside. She waited for Mrs. Findlay to walk to the back room, then slipped through the door.
The shop smelled of lemon water and tasted like fresh soap. Maeve ducked past a rack of cooking herbs to a display of mirrored arcthiometers. Their floral packaging promised the wand-shaped contraptions could make use of arcane magic to cure everything from feminine hysteria to fits of the vapors.
It was all a lie. Her father used to complain about how arcthiometers were junk, meant to prey on superstitious people. Arcane magic was real, of course. It was an invisible element that existed everywhere like the air one breathed—but onlyscriptomancers could harness it. And they created their enchantments by writing, with extensive training and special pigmented ink. Not by waving wands.
Maeve scanned the front counter. Mrs. Findlay popped out, and Maeve ducked down, covering her mouth.
“Is that you, Isla?” Mrs. Findlay called. “What in the worlds are you doing here this early?”
Maeve considered running out the door, but she needed answers. She looked around and quickly snatched a bar of soap from a display. “I was looking for one of these,” she said, bringing it to the counter.18
Mrs. Findlay’s brow wrinkled. “You wish to purchase shaving lather?”
So it was. The pale violet woman’s soaps were all perfumed and cost more than she could afford at the moment.
“It’s for a dog,” Maeve said quickly, then pulled a shill from her pocket and set it on the counter, hoping it was enough.
Mrs. Findlay took the shill. “Do you need anything else, dear?”
Maeve hesitated. “Do you know how someone might find the sender of an anonymous letter?”
“Why? Did you receive one of the old letters?” She leaned forward. “Mr. Braithwaite will be pleased to hear it. He worries about you all by yourself.”
Did the two plucking hens spend all their free time gossiping about her loneliness?
“Can I see your letter?” Mrs. Finlay held out a hand.
Maeve caught the flutter of a black cloak from the corner of her eye. Outside, an otherwhere courier stood beside the letterbox, emptying everything into his saddlebag. He would be able to answer her questions better than ten Mrs. Findlays. He shut the letterbox and began walking away, turning a corner off the road.
“Isla, now don’t rush away from me!” Mrs. Findlay shouted as Maeve fled the shop. She ran down the side street, searching all directions. Where had he gone?
Turning in a circle, she spotted him standing before a strange black door that hung a foot off the ground on the side of the Alewick Apothecary. She had never seen a door there before. It was a courier’s door, she realized. One that would take him directly back to Blackcaster Station on the north end of Gloam the moment he stepped through it.
A door only he could step through.19
“Stop!” Maeve shouted above the wind, but the courier was half a block away and couldn’t hear her. She lifted the bar of shaving lather and threw it as hard as she could manage, aiming for the wall to get his attention. It hit him square in the back of the head.
Heavens above.
Maeve raced over puddles to the man, then realized just how much she loathed running when she doubled over with her hands fisted against her knees. She fixed her gaze on the hideous tassels of the courier’s expensive shoes, biding her time before she had to face him. “Are you all right?” she asked between pants.
“As good as can be expected, considering someone attempted to murder me with a bar of soap,” he said in a flat tone.
Maeve’s neck burned hot with embarrassment. She considered apologizing, but then bit her tongue; she could never admit to it and expect him to help her.
“I saw it happen,” she said. “A terrible crime.”
The courier was silent for a long moment. “You mean to tell me that you merely witnessed the soap being thrown?”
“I did.” Gathering courage, Maeve stood and faced her victim: a tall young man, no older than twenty. His heavy-lidded eyes were bruised from lack of sleep and hidden behind rounded spectacles that sat crooked across his nose.
He straightened them and raised a dark eyebrow. “Interesting. I could have sworn I heard a frantic woman shout for me a moment before the soap hit.”
So he had heard her. And yet he didn’t bother to turn?
“Yes, that was me. I shouted because I needed your help. But then a man came out of nowhere and threw the soap. He ran off quickly.” She shrugged. “I’m afraid I failed to get a good look at him.”
The courier gave her a searing look, then pushed his spectacles 20up his nose, smudging what Maeve had thought were freckles. But no—they were ink splatters. More ink splotched the brass-buttoned vest peeking from beneath his cloak.
He was filthy. Perhaps she should have offered him the soap instead of flinging it at him.
“Now, what was so important that you felt the need to chase me down the alley?” he asked, still rubbing his head.
She touched the outside of her pocket. “I received a letter from someone who lives in Leyland,” she said, then realized her oldfriendmight very well work at the Post. Her father used to live on the grounds, after all. But then why wouldn’t they simply admit to that? Maeve set the idea aside for the time being. “It’s one of the old letters from seven years ago, but the sender didn’t leave their name. I need to speak with them most urgently.”
“And you believe that I can somehow help you?”
“You are an otherwhere courier, are you not?” There were other types of couriers, but none wore black cloaks or took letters from letterboxes.
“Yes, I suppose I am.” He dragged in a long sigh. “Let’s see this mysterious letter of yours, then.”
“Certainly not.” It was addressed to her real first name, and she could never let anyone see it. “I left the letter at home.”
“Well, that complicates things a bit, doesn’t it?” He considered her for a moment. “I’m afraid that even with the letter, there isn’t a lot you can do.” He looked toward the door. “I should be on my way. Busy day ahead.”
He was leaving? But he couldn’t—not yet.
“Wait,” she said, studying him. He was almost handsome beneath the ink splatters, with large features that were likely disarming 21if he ever decided to bathe. She wished she had been born with the charm to coax information from him, but the mere thought of flirting with anyone made her decidedly queasy. She still had her wits, however. They’d brought her this far. “You said there isn’t alotI can do.”
“Yes, I know what I said. And?”
“That implies there is something.”
His mouth pulled flat.
“How does one find the sender of an anonymous letter? Please. I must know.”
He tugged a strand of brown hair badly in need of a cut. “There might be a scribing to track down someone who doesn’t leave their name.”
Commissioning a scribing was all it would take? If she combined her shills, she had just over a hallion. It was everything she’d saved to go south, but she would pay it in a heartbeat to get her oldfriend’s name. She rifled through her bag. “Let me gather the coins.”
“Oh no. I believe there’s been a little misunderstanding.”
Her head snapped up. “How so?”
“There’s only a small handful of people who practice that level of scriptomancy, but the stewards of the Otherwhere Post don’t exactly take scribing commissions. And I’m not even positive a scribing exists that would do precisely what you’re asking. I only said there might be.”
“Then is there some other way to find the sender?”
He ran his thumb along his full bottom lip. “There could be old records of who paid for the postage, but it’s impossible to know without digging.”
“Records?” Maeve stepped closer. “How do I dig?”22
“You can’t, I’m afraid. If you were a courier, with access …” His eyes traveled from the popped buttons on her too-small coat to the fraying lace edging her sleeves.
Her fingers curled under reflexively. She was obviously dressed for shabby stockist work, and not as someone who spent their days in an expensive upper school toiling over their writing, hoping to gain enough skill to be selected for the prestigious courier apprenticeship at the Otherwhere Post. She couldn’t even afford a left-handed quill.
He must have realized it, because his eyebrows drew together. “Forget I said that. Access to those records is difficult to come by these days.” He squinted up at the darkening clouds. “Oh dear. It’s going to rain soon, and my shoes are brand new. It would be a crime to ruin them in a puddle.”
“But it rains constantly. I just—”
“Good luck and all with that letter of yours.” He opened the courier door and stepped through.
“Please wait,” Maeve said, but the door shut with a snick. The handle disappeared before her fingers reached it, along with the door.
She beat a fist against the cold stone wall.
Mr. Braithwaite was in the midst of helping customers when Maeve ducked into the shop and headed straight to the back room. She dug through soiled blotting papers in the waste bin until she found yesterday’s newspaper, covered in coffee stains. Flipping to the back page, she skimmed through the Postmaster’s newsletter until she found the large paragraph that appeared every year 23around this time: the listing for the courier apprenticeship. All writing students interested in trying out were instructed to bring their writing program completion certificates to one of the testing locations on September seventh.
Less than a week away.
It was unfair that you had to complete a writing program to test. All the programs Maeve knew of were absurdly expensive. There were a handful of city-funded programs, but those grew to have years-long wait lists after the Written Doors burned and people realized the only way to cross worlds was to become a courier.
She pushed her feelings aside and continued reading about how you could only test within the two years after graduating upper school, otherwise you forfeited your opportunity—the House of Ministers’ rule. They only had so many trained scriptomancy instructors and refused to waste a spot on anyone whose career might be stifled by old age.
It seemed money, youth, and a burning penchant for writing were the requirements. Maeve had two and could easily fake the third with the right clothing and snobby attitude.
It could work. Except for the fact that she didn’t have a writing program completion certificate.
Maeve walked past the tall chest of drawers filled with blotters, to where a piece of paper hung in a dusty frame. Mr. Braithwaite’s completion certificate for an upper school merchant program. It was handwritten, with a pair of stamped seals at the bottom that she could easily recreate in a few days with all the inksmithy’s tools at her disposal.
She could make her own certificate in no time—for a writing program somewhere far away.24
Maeve stepped back to the newspaper and quickly scanned the remainder of the paragraph. Her mouth pulled into a frown at the last line.
AllthosewhopasswillbeimmediatelybroughttotheOtherwherePosttobeginayear-longinstructioninthescriptomancyneededtodeliverletters.
The idea of learning scriptomancy brought to mind the image of her father, hunched over his notebook at their old kitchen table.
She took a long breath through her nose. Maybe scriptomancy was a necessary evil. If she could win herself a spot in the apprenticeship, she would have all the access she needed to track down her old friend. That courier had said as much.
She chewed on her cuticle, thinking through logistics. The past seven years had taught her how to keep her identity a secret. After Inverly, the newspapers all reported that she had perished with her father and Great-Aunt Aggie. Most of her father’s old scriptomancer colleagues probably worked for the Post, but she’d never met them. Even if someone had seen the old sepiagraph of her that her father used to carry in his coat pocket, they wouldn’t recognize her now; she used to be stick thin with a gaunt face and shorn hair that Aggie would style into ugly pigtail ringlets.
Her unwieldy braid had lightened over the years to the pale orange color of cast iron rust. Her hips and face had filled out, and her hairline was freckled from hours spent journaling at the Alewick cliffs without a proper hat.
That pigtailed girl was long gone. Maeve had gone by Isla Craig for the past eight months. What harm could a few more weeks do? She had paid a handsome sum for her forged paperwork so no one would question it.25
It was perfect, save for the unsettling fact that she would have to try out for a spot in the godforsaken courier apprenticeship.
At least she could write. It was her greatest asset, aside from knowing when to run.
Maeve read over the Postmaster’s announcement a second time. A third. A fourth. Then she opened her journal and scribbled across the top:
There has been a change of plans.
3
Maeve returned her train ticket and used a portion of the money to purchase a sturdy new skirt and blouse from a secondhand store, then a smart writing case made of oiled cowhide that she filled with expired inks and used quills from Mr. Braithwaite’s waste bin. The morning of the examination, she dressed by candlelight. She folded the love letter into the anonymous letter and tucked them both down the pocket of her new skirt, then grabbed her suitcase and shut the door of her flat, sealing away yet another chapter of her life she would never return to.
The nearest testing location was an hour’s walk north up Gloam’s narrow, twisting streets. Her heart pumped inside her chest as university buildings loomed overhead—buildings hewn centuries ago, just after the Written Doors were created and the University of Gloam was founded, spanning all three known worlds.
The Barrow campus used to house only natural and applied sciences, whereas Leyland used to be the hub of all language arts.
When the Written Doors burned, the Leyland campus scrambled to add in all the missing disciplines so it could function independently as a full university, but Maeve could still feel the history of language arts everywhere she looked. It had shaped this city, 27from the grubby, handwritten store signs that read like novellas to the inksmithies that stood on every street corner. Even the buildings themselves were shades of black and white and parchment. They leaned haphazardly against one another as if built as an afterthought by someone who passed their days with their nose buried in a well-worn book.
Gloam in Inverly had felt entirely different. It was where all the other humanities were once taught, with neighborhoods that bled together like watercolors, awash with painting and poetry and music—all long gone now.
Maeve rubbed away a stray tear, frustrated by thinking of Inverly when she had a writing test to take. She picked up her pace. A thick fog rolled in by the time she reached Galbraith Hall. The southernmost testing location was an imposing cathedral-like building situated in the university’s College of Rhetoric. A dozen black carriages perched along the gravel drive, all marked with the Post’s pigeon, likely here to take all the apprentices who made the cut to their new home.
Maeve wove around the first few carriages then halted at a commotion.
Protesters gathered near the building’s entrance. Men and women in plain winter coats and homespun skirts and trousers carried banners emblazoned with bold slogans calling for more apprenticeship opportunities, for reformation in the writing programs. Three constabulary officers in stark gray jackets guarded the main door.
Maeve searched, but there was no other way inside. Her fingers touched the letters in her pocket, and she forced a deep breath through her nose.28
Holding her writing kit tight to her waist, she made her way to the nearest officer, a large man with a patch of razor burn spilling from behind his decorated coat collar.
He turned to her, and she felt eleven years old again, at the Sacrifict Orphanage while Headmistress Castlemaine’s ruler cracked down on her left hand. Nevertellanyonewhoyouareagain,youfoolishgirl! Andstayfarawayfromtheconstabulary.
“If you’re here to test, I’ll need to see your official paperwork,” the officer said. When Maeve failed to move her lips, his chin tilted. “Are you well, miss?”
She was far from it, but she pulled out Isla Craig’s identification along with the completion certificate she’d painstakingly forged from looking at Mr. Braithwaite’s. It appeared perfectly legitimate, and yet her heart thrummed behind her ribs while the officer glanced over everything.
Taking his time.
“I need to get through as well,” someone said. An older woman in a ragged tweed coat shoved Maeve aside, waving a leather ledger at the officer. “My paperwork, sir.”
The officer took the woman’s ledger, flipping through it. “Are these tenement agreements?”
“Yes,” she said, lifting her pale chin. “All by yours truly. Written as well as anyone from an official program. Let me have a chance to test,” the woman begged.
“You’ll have to step back,” said the officer.
“But my mother and sister are in Barrow. Please.”
The officer gave an exasperated sigh, then handed Maeve her paperwork. “You can go,” he said, and nudged her around him, then turned to face the woman. “You, on the other hand—”29
Maeve rushed inside before she could hear the rest of his sentence.
As soon as the doors shut behind her, she fell against them and dabbed at perspiration with the back of her gloved hand, staring wide-eyed at a grand entrance hall. Young men in oilskin hats and finely tailored jackets chattered away with women in fitted blouses and bustled skirts. So many people, and nearly all of them carried suitcases and small personal effects.
Maeve did some quick calculations. There were several other testing locations. Most here would never make it to the Post. Those who didn’t were likely fated to become barristers or academics, or perhaps do nothing at all; their family fortunes meant they would never have to lift a finger for anything if they didn’t wish to.
That woman with her tenement agreements should have been given a chance.
A few groups on the fringes wore similar attire to the protesters out front, probably from a city-funded writing program.
A girl in a peach-colored bonnet stood by herself. She looked pleasant enough.
“Are we all supposed to wait out here before we take the writing test?” Maeve asked her.
“Oh, yes. I think they’ll call another group soon,” she said, pointing to double doors at the back with a banner above them that read: examination room. She fanned herself with a stack of papers with some official-looking seals that bore little resemblance to Maeve’s forged completion certificate.
“What are those papers?” Maeve asked.
“You mean my transcripts? We’re supposed to have them out and ready to present.”30
“Transcripts?”
“To prove your upper school writing scores,” the woman said, her smile faltering at Maeve’s expression. “But don’t worry a bit. I’ve heard they take all sorts of scores into account. It’s the writing test that matters the most.”
As soon as the woman finished, Maeve muttered an excuse and darted to the nearest lavatory, locking herself inside. Bracing one hand on the sink, she peeled off her gloves and splashed water on her face.
Why hadn’t she thought of transcripts?
“You’re woefully out of your league,” she said to her reflection, feeling quite the uneducated fool.
She had sold her train ticket and walked all this way. This couldn’t be it. Surely there was another way inside one of those carriages waiting along the drive.
Determined to find it, Maeve left the lavatory and wandered past the entrance hall, into a bustling student lounge flanked by blazing hearths and scattered with leather chairs. Several people held black folios on their laps, stamped with that bead-eyed pigeon.
“Pardon me,” Maeve said to one young man who sat hunched over a folio. He squinted up at her with a sour expression. She gestured to the folio. “What is that for?”
“It’s what you’re given when you pass. To keep your transcripts together with your admittance letter and any paperwork you might have brought.”
He tucked the folio away, then took out a journal and a well of pale blue ink.
Maeve knew the shade. It was named Raven’s Tears, imported from a forested island off the southern coast called Gol. A bottle 31cost twenty-eight shills; Mr. Braithwaite swore to have her head if she broke one.
“That’s a fine color,” she said.
His thin eyebrows furrowed to a line. “Not really, but I ran out of lampblack, and it was the only bottle I could find. It’s difficult to see against parchment.”
Because you dried Raven’s Tears in sunlight to deepen the color to true sapphire.
He scribbled some words, then shook pounce powder over them, which would only lightenthe ink. Heavens, he had no clue what he was doing.
Scriptomancydemandsanexpertknowledgeofwritingtools. Youhave to become an encyclopedia of ink and pigment, her father had told her more times than she could count.
Turning in a slow circle, Maeve surveyed all the people her age—young men and women with horribly expensive educations. But she probably knew more about ink than many of them and had certainly written as much.
A young woman walked by with a curtain of auburn hair bobbing against birdlike shoulders. She sidled into a chaise, fiddling nervously with the black folio in her lap. At first glance, it would be easy to mistake her for Maeve, given their similar coloring. The woman even had a mole near her upper lip. Maeve shut her eyes and imagined herself sitting in the woman’s place, with the black folio filled with transcripts on her lap.
She turned the dark thought over in her mind. If she were able to switch places with this woman, she would have everything she needed.
But no. Maeve knew how much this apprenticeship meant to all 32the applicants here—especially to those who had family trapped in Barrow, on the other side of the now-burnt Written Doors. She couldn’t take away someone’s chance to see long-lost family again. The thought was appalling. She didn’t even know how she would attempt such a thing.
As soon as she gave it a moment’s thought, however, ideas rushed forth on exactly how to accomplish it. A plan formed in her mind that would even give her a chance to speak with the woman, ask her some questions, before making any regrettable decisions.
Maeve chewed on her lip, considering.
If she left now, it would be weeks before she might have enough saved for another train ticket. Mr. Braithwaite would ask too many questions if she suddenly begged for her job back. She didn’t want to go back, anyhow. The thought felt like a sliver in her thumb.
Moving swiftly to an empty hall, Maeve popped open her old suitcase. Her cowhide writing kit sat snugly beside a change of clothes.
She took off her coat and pushed it inside, then pulled out her journal and ran her fingers over the leather. Leaving her suitcase beneath a sideboard, Maeve held her journal in front of her and walked to where the redhead sat, while her stomach churned.
The woman, it turned out, wasn’t much younger than Maeve, with stockings the color of summer sunflowers peeking from an ankle-length crepe skirt. She tugged her earlobe, pulling at a lustrous pearl earring that must have cost a handsome sum.
Her black folio rested against the floor.
“I beg your pardon.” Maeve tapped her journal, then ran a gloved finger to a spot on the blank page. “Are you the incoming apprentice Neve Baird?”33
She spoke the name slowly, as if reading it for the first time.
The woman dragged in a sigh. “I’m afraid I’m not. I’m Eilidh Hill.” She spoke in an elegant albeit dismissive voice.
Nodding, Maeve tapped a spot toward the bottom of the page. Hard. “Yes. Miss EilidhHill. Here you are.” She snapped the journal shut and smiled. “You must bring your things and come with me.”
“This instant?”
“Yes, of course,” Maeve said, not giving her a moment to argue. It worked. Eilidh followed her until they were alone beside the sideboard where Maeve had left her things.
“What is the purpose of this?” Eilidh asked.
“I’m Miss Erskine, an understudy steward at the Otherwhere Post.” Maeve raised her chin, summoning a hint of Headmistress Castlemaine’s disdainful demeanor.
Eilidh looked her over with a sneer. “But you’re … young.”
“Is that a problem?” Maeve squared her shoulders, managing to keep her composure.
“No. Of course not. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s quite all right. The reason we’re speaking is I’ve just received some news from our testers. Confidential news. As such, I’ll need to see your paperwork before I speak any more,” Maeve said, rather convincingly.
She was quite good at this. She didn’t know whether to feel horrible about that fact or cheer.
Eilidh riffled through her leather satchel, digging out an official Leyland identification paper.
It seemed that Eilidh PretoriaHill was seventeen and hailed from Almsworth, a small hamlet in the far south. “Did you come here all by yourself?”
Eilidh gave a hesitant nod. “Mother took the train halfway 34up Leyland and would have come farther, if not for my younger brother. He’s quite the handful.” A sheen of moisture filled her eyes, and she dabbed at tears with her lace-gloved hand.
Eilidh’s family might have all the money in the worlds, but they were likely missing her as well. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to give them a little more time with each other.
Maeve carefully placed the identification on the sideboard, then took out her journal, along with a few papers from her own writing kit. She set them on top of Eilidh’s identification, forming a neat stack. “I’ll also need the folio with your admittance letter and transcripts.”
Eilidh gripped the folio with spindly fingers, hugging it to her stomach for a flinching moment before handing it over.
Fine silver thread wove along the edges. Maeve cracked open the black leather and scanned a letter, written by one of the stewards themselves, an Eamon Mordraig. It congratulated the admitted on successfully completing the writing examination, then went on to explain logistics, mainly how carriages would begin to leave at eleven sharp for the Post grounds just north of Blackcaster Square. Eilidh was to present this very letter and her paperwork to a driver to secure her seat. There were no other instructions.
Maeve dropped the letter on the growing stack of papers and rubbed her freezing hands together, feeling nauseated. It was time. If she was going to commit to this scheme, she had to do it now or give up.
“What is this about?” A tremor ran through Eilidh’s voice.
“It’s rather unpleasant tidings, I’m afraid. I know the journey from Almsworth must have been strenuous, which is why it is difficultto deliver the unfortunate news I’ve been tasked with relaying.”
Eilidh’s thin lips parted. “Unfortunate?”35
“I’m afraid so.” Maeve gave a withering smile. “Through a testing error, we’ve accidentally passed more people than we have room for. I’ve come to break the unlucky news to a handful, and you’re the first.”
“You mean I didn’t make the apprenticeship?” Eilidh looked on the verge of tears.
Maeve’s breath caught in her throat. “Do you have any family in Barrow?”
Eilidh shook her head. “My family was lucky. They’re all in the far south.”
Thank goodness for that.
“At least you’ll be with them soon. And because of the mix-up, we want you to come and test again next fall.”
As far as Maeve knew, that wasn’t against the rules. Eilidh would have a year with her family before getting another chance, and Maeve would get inside the Post. It was a win for them both.
Maeve was about to bid her farewell when another thought struck. If Eilidh had a classmate at the Post who knew her, they’d realize Maeve was lying. “Is there anyone else here from your writing program that I might inform?” she asked.
“I’m the only one who made the trek north this year.”
“How about last year?”
“I don’t know.”
“The year before?”
“I wasn’t close with anyone from those classes.”
Butwouldtheyrememberyou?Maeve nearly asked, but saying it aloud might come across as odd. This conversation had already taken far too long.
She fished through the papers on the table, folding one and handing it over. “Your identification.”36
Eilidh tucked it down her own bag without realizing it was Isla Craig’s identification. Eilidh’s lay buried in the stack.
She reached for the folio, but Maeve stopped her hand. “I’ll need to confiscate your folio.”
“What about my transcripts?”
“I’ll make sure they’re filed away for future reference.”
Eilidh nodded, then looked to the floor for a long moment. When she finally looked up, Maeve’s heart lurched.
The girl’s bottom lip quivered. Glistening tears leaked down each of her cheeks.
“What’s the matter, dear?” Maeve took her hand.
“My mother paid for the train ticket and I—I spent the six hallions she gave me for the return trip shopping yesterday.” A blush rose to her cheeks.
“Six hallions?” It was a despicable amount to spend on anything.
“I assumed I would get in,” Eilidh said, sniffling, and Maeve had to school the revulsion from her features. “And now I’m afraid I don’t have the means to get home. Is there someone from the Post I can speak with about contacting Mother?”
Blastitall. “Dear me, I’ve gone and forgotten! We’re awarding everyone involved with enough funds for a train ticket home.”
Maeve dug inside her suitcase, furious with herself as she pressed her small purse to Eilidh’s hand quickly, leaving no room to second-guess. All the shills to her name.
Eilidh managed a smile and walked away with the last of Maeve’s money.
4
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