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.”
    â€œEdgar, please.”
    â€œWe’re going to die in here, Kate!”
    â€œNo, we’re not.” Kate tugged up a corner of the floor blanket and rapped her knuckles on what sounded like hollow wood where stone should have been. Edgar looked at her, confused.
    â€œArtemis knew what he was doing, putting us in here,” she said. “There’s another way out. Please, Edgar. Trust me.”

Chapter 3
The Warrens
    T hick smoke swirled around the cellar, creeping along the stairs, up the chimney, and under the door of the little hiding place. It crawled up Kate’s and Edgar’s noses like ghostly worms, making them cough and choke as the air around them was churned into a deadly soup.
    â€œHere.” Edgar thrust the key into Kate’s hand, and she wrestled the blanket out from under her knees, flapping it back to uncover a circular trapdoor with a sunken handle. Her fingers felt for the keyhole, pushed the key in, and turned it, sending a deep clunk echoing from under the floor.
    â€œOpen it. Open it!”
    The rusted hinges cracked and moaned as Kate lifted the hatch, sending a gush of dead air swirling up to fill the smoky space. A match flared as Edgar relit Artemis’s lamp and held it out over the deep narrow shaft. There was just enough light to make out a passage at the bottom and a long wooden ladder nailed down the side.
    Kate went first, leaving Edgar struggling to keep his eyes open, they were so sore with the smoke.
    â€œIt’s not far,” she said, dropping onto hard earth. “Come on.”
    Edgar swung himself down the hole and descended the ladder as fast as he could, closing the trapdoor as he went. He jumped the last two rungs and looked back up the shaft, half expecting a warden to come slithering behind them. “Where are we?” he asked.
    Kate could hear the worry in his voice and he clung to her wrist. They were standing at the end of a low tunnel built of small gray stones, not far from a shadowy crossroad where it linked with two wider tunnels that split off at sharp angles.
    â€œI’m going to take a look up ahead,” she whispered. “You stay here. Watch the door.”
    â€œMe? Why? Hey, wait!”
    Kate ignored him and headed off down the tunnel, taking their only light with her.
    Even with the lamp, the tunnel felt tight and claustro-phobic. The walls were rough and uneven, and narrow enough at some points to rub against her shoulders unless she turned to the side. The little flame flickered, burning dangerously low as she drew close to the junction up ahead. She ran her fingers along the wall and was trying not to think about the fires tearing through her home above her, when something crunched under her feet.
    Kate stopped and stepped back, worried that the old floor might collapse into a tunnel below. She shone the light toward her feet. The ground felt sturdy enough, but there were tiny brown things scattered over it: things that crunched and clicked under her boots. And they were moving.
    The little shapes clambered over one another, writhing across the floor, making it wriggle and shine as if the entire place was alive. Artemis had complained for months about hide beetles attacking the leather-bound books in the cellar; now Kate knew where they had been coming from. She stepped straight through them, reached the junction, and pressed her back against the wall, summoning the courage to look out.
    The left-hand tunnel sloped downward and turned a corner some way along, where a torch was burning on a hook in the wall. Maybe someone else had found their way into the tunnels: a neighbor, perhaps, someone who might help her save Artemis from the wardens. Then she looked to the right, where the second tunnel had a torch of its own much farther away, linking on one side with another branching path.
    Footsteps echoed slowly in the distance and a third torch moved into sight, carried by a hunched figure walking with