Chapter 18: Maret Dun Finds the Mirror That Should Not Exist

The message came through the book drop three days after Brennan folded the correction slips back into his satchel and left without speaking again.

Elias found it at seven in the morning, in the forty-third volume on the third shelf of the Natural Philosophy section, tucked between pages forty and forty-one of the surveying methodology text that no student had borrowed in six years. A single folded sheet, no salutation, written in the cramped vertical hand he had learned to associate with Maret Dun through the fragments she had passed to the sub-basement meeting. The handwriting was not decorative. It did not slope or breathe. Each letter was constructed with the economy of someone who had spent years producing text that other people would classify and file.

Full assembly, it read. Sub-basement. Thursday, ninth hour. Attendance is not optional.