Sage cycled down an avenue of trees, their bare branches snatching at her coat and satchel. She could hear Students' chatter and the tremor of the bells from the lawn, but peddled harder so that the gravel hissed and crackled beneath her tires. The arch leading into the city rose suddenly as the trees stunted then faded, its golden words—ipsa scientia potestas est—passing overhead when Sage turned onto the main street and began the long ride home.

As one of the oldest constructions in the city, the University was built at its very centre, circling a hawthorn tree which grew in the grandest courtyard overlooked by the Alchemical Library. Its branches spilled above the University's domes and pillars so that in springtime, white blossoms tumbled through the air as heavily as the snow in winter. Mossy brick cascaded down into the front lawn, which could only be trodden on by Scholars, Students, and Stewards. The latter two came and went in their white and black dress. Spectres and their shadows drifting along the same stone corridors.

Slipping down a side-street, Sage rode through the Artisan District, the air smelling sulphurous from freshly-glazed pottery and wood-stoked kilns. She slowed at the window of a horologist, the faces of a thousand clocks staring back at her. Their silver hands ticked through the seconds, synchronous until she looked deeper at their cogs, which turned to a tune of their own. All precise yet every one distinct. No clock quite like another, even as they showed the same hour on their thousand faces.

It was well before teatime, but the lamplighters were already illuminating the street. Sage kicked off from the pavement, then faltered at the sight of a figure pressed against the corner of the shop. She was fae, dressed in rags and without shoes, her long toes strikingly scarlet against the gutter she stood in. There were no adornments on her ears or around her neck, though her skin looked so thin that Sage suspected even the slightest pressure would break it. On her right hand, she was missing two fingers.

The fae's eyes were downcast and her lips pressed together, but even without words, Sage knew what she wanted. Twisting to open a pocket on her satchel, she withdrew a hunk of bread and cheese wrapped in a handkerchief. The bells had distracted her from lunch, but she was no longer hungry. She shuffled onto the pavement and held the food out to the fae, who accepted it with care not to touch Sage's hand.

"Goddess bless you," the fae mumbled, her face still lowered to the ground.

Sage continued cycling until the end of the pavement, then wheeled her bicycle through a public garden before emerging onto the eastern embankment. The path was wide and empty along the river, the winter's wind across the water keeping most wanderers to the city streets. Today, it was blissfully quiet, even with the bells struggling against the wind that whipped Sage's hair out of its bun.

She smiled, letting momentum speed her bicycle down the trail towards home. Crumbling cottages tangled in ivy flickered past, a wooden bridge in the distance teetering up from the mud like matchsticks floating on ashen waters. There were no fae crossing into the city this evening, although Sage could see the faint cast of a bonfire leaping up from the village on the other side of the river.

The sun hadn't quite set yet and, in the fading light, Sage saw a glint like quicksilver in the water. Glancing around again to check she was alone, she turned abruptly onto the bridge. Her tires squealed and the wood groaned beneath her bicycle, which fell clumsily against the ragged deck while Sage clambered down to the mudbank.

Beneath the bridge was a little inlet where a tide would gather and swirl before surging out again into the river. Pieces of detritus, carried by the water, were sucked from the tide into the mud, which had slowly grown over time into a scrap pile of strange and singular oddities. More than one part of Sage's clunking bicycle had been exchanged for a polished piece of scrap that she had discovered there.

Her boots sank into the mud as she toed around the inlet. The water was too cold to wade in, but items often washed against the sheets of metal lanced into the mud. Peering into a half-submerged cylinder, Sage found a set of copper cogs not dissimilar to the ones she had seen earlier in the horologist's shop. They were clogged with algae, and Sage resisted the temptation to wipe them clean on her coat when she remembered that she had given away her handkerchief to the fae.

Fingers growing numb, Sage staggered back up to the bridge and righted her bicycle. The cogs bulged in her satchel's pocket, although she managed to force it closed after reshuffling her books. Then, her hands stilled. She lifted a corner of the satchel, despite knowing that there was nothing beneath it. She swore, but her voice was swept away by the river.

She had forgotten the grimoire at the University.

The sky was a wash of indigo, but it would deepen to black in the time it would take Sage to return to the University. She could leave the grimoire in the bay window and hope nobody would sit on it, but her seminar was in the early morning and Jansen was rarely sympathetic to his students' excuses. Sage's heart was thundering at the thought of turning up to a seminar unprepared, and so her decision was already made.

She retraced her path back to the University, cycling against the clock as shadows stretched and writhed behind her. It was evening now, and the shopkeeps had latched and barred their windows. Sage didn't like being in the city so late—not when all the doors were closed to her and she could hear the faint chatter of families spouting like smoke from their chimneys.

She swerved under a lamplit arch and directly up the University's lawn. There were no Students lounging around the grounds—all having returned home to study or sleep—so a silence had settled over the grass, disturbed only by the mourning bells. The pond lay smooth as mercury as Sage rode around it, peddling hard towards the Grand Hall.

Huffing for breath, she propped her bicycle against a bench and started up the steps. The University was draped in darkness, although the Hall's doors were always left unlocked in case a nocturnal Scholar was struck by brilliance before sunrise. They creaked open onto an ivory floor and the golden apple suspended in the very centre of the room. Sage could see her warped face reflected back at her as she peered around for a Steward, yet there were none watching the door.

She tiptoed down the Hall, slipping into a narrow passage to one side of the main stairwell. It was long and winding, usually reserved for Stewards passing from the kitchens to the professors' rooms, but Sage had discovered it in second-year and used it ever since. She stepped out from a little mahogany door built into the panelling and went immediately to the bay window.

The grimoire was gone.

Sage felt a coldness trickle down her spine, but gritted her teeth and hurried instead to the spiral stairwell leading to the Alchemical Library. It was her last hope that somebody had found and returned the grimoire to its shelf. She would just have to stupidly explain herself to the librarian the following morning.

One, two, three. Sage counted her steps up until she reached the marble corridor. The bells seemed to ricochet around her when she burst into the dark library, swelled by shadows, as if one misstep could send her plummeting into an inky ocean. But then a warm glow caught Sage's eyes, and she stumbled around, heart hammering. It was a desk-lamp, flaming softly orange as she approached and saw that beneath it there was a lumpen shape.

The grimoire was neatly arranged on the desk. Sage's desk. The one she had been studying at earlier in the day. Her hands quivered as she reached out and grasped the grimoire. Its brown cloth was rough beneath her fingers, but she still brought it to her chest and sighed. The lamp's flame faltered and then faded under Sage's breath.

She thought that darkness would drench the library, but the wide, crystal window let in strange flickers of silvery light. She walked back towards the door, peering out of the window as she passed to see if the moon had risen. But it was not the moon that cast light into the library. It was the candles melting around the courtyard and guiding a procession of figures to the hawthorn tree.

A/N I think I'm decided on sticking to both Tuesday and Friday chapter uploads at least until the new year! I've been trying to read more non-fiction this winter, so it's fun to focus on fantasy for at least two days a week :D