Thirty years after Northern Lights introduced Lyra Belacqua, Philip Pullman concludes her story in The Rose Field, the final instalment of The Book of Dust trilogy. In this exclusive extract, Lyra, now using the alias Miss Silver, prepares for a meeting in a foreign city.
She washes in her hotel room, noting fading bruises and sunburn, and applies rose salve to her face. She considers whether to continue trusting Ionides, her guide, who has been helpful but is unfamiliar to her. She still has most of the gold given by Farder Coram and decides she can afford to manage without him, though she likes him.
Without her alethiometer, which is gone, she turns to a pack of cards given by an old man on a train. She shuffles and draws one: a man defending a barricade against soldiers. She finds it discouraging and puts the cards away.
Ionides greets her downstairs, offering to guide her to Marletto’s Café to meet Mustafa Bey, a well-known figure. He walks with her confidently, despite his ragged appearance, and Lyra adopts a new identity: Tatiana Iorekova, a witch queen from Novaya Zemlya. She names Ionides Parathanasius, a magician from Prague, and instructs him to present her simply as Queen Tatiana.
Spotting a dress shop, she buys a scarlet ribbon and ties it in her hair. She smiles, surprising herself, as she cannot remember the last time she did so.
