That afternoon, I went back to the Royal Archive. I walked so fast that Nora had to run.
"My lady, he knew!" she panted. "How could he know?"
"I do not know yet." My jaw hurt from it. "But there are only a few ways. Someone saw us. Someone told him. Or he has people in the Archive."
"Master Ellis?"
"No," I said at once. "Master Ellis is too of books and tea. He would not be a good spy. But someone else may be."
The old man was asleep at his desk with his glasses on his forehead. I did not wake him. I walked past quietly, found the east wall, and knelt at the bottom shelf. There it was: a grey book with a worn spine, labeled in white letters. *Licence Ledger, Vol. XII.*
I carried it to the nearest reading table and laid it flat. It was heavy and covered in dust. I turned the pages with my , as lightly as I could, until I reached page one hundred and fourteen.
Under the letter D, in a long list of names, I found the entry. It was written in blue ink, three years earlier, in a clerk's perfect small handwriting.
*Dane, Marcus. Royal Physician. Nightbloom seeds, two . For research into sleep remedies for the royal family. Approved: O.P.*
My mouth went dry again.
I read it three times. *Dane, Marcus.* A name I had known since I was nine. A man who had given me peppermint candy and cured my fever.
Three years ago. Two ounces of seeds. And a second name, only two letters.
*O.P.*
Nora leaned over my shoulder. "My lady, who is O.P.?"
"I do not know," I said. "But it is someone who has the power to approve a license for the most dangerous seeds in the kingdom."
I wrote the entry in my notebook, word for word, with the date and the page number. My hand shook with and fear. It was not proof of murder. It was only a beginning. But it was the first real brick in a wall that, at last, I could stand on and climb.
Then I noticed something else.
I lifted my hand from the page, and saw a small clean circle on the dusty paper, around the line about Marcus Dane. The dust around it was thick. But the dust *on* the page, at the margin, had been brushed away by a finger.
A very recent finger. The marks were still fresh.
"Someone read this page today," I whispered.
"Today?"
"This morning. Maybe an hour ago."
I turned slowly. The great round hall was quiet. The long beams of light moved across the floor. Between the shelves, I saw nothing but books and dust.
Behind me, a voice said, "Oh, you found it."
I jumped. Master Ellis stood at my elbow, blinking behind his glasses, his hair standing straight up from sleep. He looked at the grey book, and nodded, quite happily.
"The gentleman asked for that very ledger this morning," he said. "The same one who came three weeks ago. He did not give his name. But I do not think he was a *gentleman* after all. Not exactly."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He leaned close.
"My dear, he wore the uniform of the Royal Guard."