Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (18 page)

“Better I kill myself in a good cause than let the Library simply erase me. The Archivist has already destroyed my work. We both know he won’t allow me to live on much longer. If dying is my fate, at least I can try to change Thomas Schreiber’s before it comes.” He reached out for Santi’s hand. “I will happily remember every cut, every burn, every blow if it helps set that boy free. Please don’t stand in my way.”

Santi bowed his head for a moment, stepped forward, and rested his forehead against Wolfe’s. “You fool,” he said, and kissed him, sweet and slow. “Don’t ask me to watch you tear yourself to pieces.”

He let go of Wolfe, went into the bedroom, and closed the door behind him.

Wolfe said, “I can’t blame him for that; he remembers how I was after. But I’m stronger now. I will manage.”

“Sir—” Jess’s voice went cold in his throat, and he couldn’t finish for a long, struggling moment. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” The look in his dark eyes was chilling now, lightless, the same as when he’d been the unwilling proctor for their class of innocent postulants, knowing so many would fail or die. “I’m not your hero. It was my doing that made you all targets in the first place. If you’d never met me, your life would have been happier. It surely would be longer.” His smile was awful—full of bitterness and heartbreak. “Now go find me a suitable Mesmer, and let’s get this over with before Nic comes to his senses.”

F
inding a Mesmer wasn’t hard; finding one who didn’t have ties to the Library was much more difficult, and, in the end, Jess had to settle for one, on the advice of smuggler friends, who was known for conducting under-the-table thefts from wealthy clients, some of whom he convinced to rob
themselves
and forget they’d done it
.
A gifted man, no doubt about it.

Just not a very nice one.

In person, Elsinore Quest was a rabbity little fellow who hunched his shoulders and ducked his head and almost never met Jess’s eyes. But when he did, Jess realized why. There was a certain steeliness to his gaze that would certainly have put some of his victims off too soon. Better to seem inoffensive and incapable of violence, particularly if someone wanted to entrust mind and will to you.

Quest kept up a steady stream of chatter on the carriage ride back, which was unbearably annoying, since all he talked about was the weather. It was typical for the time of year—warm and humid—and Quest seemed to think that it would be the death of him.

If only it were true, at least it would stop his endless droning.

“You understand what I’m paying you to do?” Jess interrupted, when he recognized the streets they were crossing. They were close to Wolfe’s house. “And what I’m paying you to forget?”

Quest’s flow of complaints shut off as if someone had closed a valve inside him, and he raised his gaze to meet Jess’s. The man was in his forties, most likely, with weathered, ill-kept, dry skin and graying, thinning hair, but his eyes—blue as the faded Alexandrian sky—were still vital and powerful. “Don’t worry about me, young master,” he said, and smiled. “I’ve forgotten more deadly secrets than you can ever imagine existed. One more is no bother, especially at the price you’re paying. Though I should point out—just for business purposes—that I sent a message off to a colleague about where I’d be and who you are. In case some . . . mishap occurs.”

In other words, he wasn’t a fool and he knew the risks. Jess nodded. He didn’t take offense. Everyone in the shadow trades had to watch his own back.

“Half now,” Jess said. “Half when you’re done.”

“Reasonable,” Quest said, and turned to look out the carriage window. The steam powering it puffed white and wispy behind them on the still, quiet night air; the streets were deserted, which Jess thought was a good thing. The fewer witnesses to Quest’s visit, the better. “Ah. We must be close.”

The carriage slowed, and Jess jumped out to offer the driver the standard fare of five
geneih
. Quest climbed down slowly, as if he was old and fragile, and shuffled after Jess to Santi’s door.

Wolfe opened it and stood aside. He was fully dressed now in a loose black shirt and trousers and boots. There was no sign of Santi, and the bedroom door was still shut.

“Elsinore Quest, Mesmer,” Jess said. “Scholar Wolfe, who’ll be your subject.”

“Very pleased to meet you,” Quest said, and weakly offered a handshake. Wolfe ignored it until the hand dropped awkwardly back to Quest’s side. “We will need relative quiet. Ah, this corner chair will do. Please sit down, sir. Make yourself quite comfortable. It’s very important
that you be quite comfortable and let all your cares fall away, let them blow away like sand on the wind . . .”

There is a certain strange rhythm to the man’s voice,
Jess thought, and tried to pinpoint what it was that so unsettled him—and, at the same time, what soothed him. He’d already started his work, then. Odd; Jess recognized that the man had used the same tones in the carriage, during that endless flow of weather observations. Had Quest tried to use his talents on him?
Had it worked?
No, surely he’d have known if it had.
Wouldn’t I?
The doubt made his mouth go dry.

Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.

Wolfe sank down in the chair that Quest indicated, and as the Mesmer pulled another chair close, Jess saw the bedroom door silently open. Santi stepped out. The captain moved to stand beside Jess and said, in a low voice that couldn’t have carried to Wolfe, “If this goes badly, I will stop it.”

“I know,” Jess said. “It might not even work—sometimes it doesn’t . . .” His voice faded because Wolfe had already closed his eyes. Quest’s voice dropped to a low, calm rhythm, and Jess couldn’t catch what he was saying now as he bent close to Wolfe. The Scholar’s head slowly tipped forward.

Wolfe raised one hand—or, at least, the hand rose. There was no corresponding shift of balance from Wolfe’s body, no sign that the movement of that hand and arm had been directed from a conscious mind. The rest of him stayed completely still.

Quest reached out and pushed on the top of the floating hand. It hardly moved at all. He nodded in satisfaction and looked over to Jess. “He’s ready. What do you want me to ask?”

That fast?
Jess blinked. “Ask him about his time in the cells—”

“Wait,” Santi said. He sighed. “I hate that you’ve forced him into this, but at least we can spare him some agony. Ask him about being taken to prison, then ask about any time he was taken
out
of a cell. Nothing about
what happened to him—only locations and surroundings. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” Quest said blandly. “You’re looking only for where he was being held. I understand.”

“Good.” Santi’s gaze bored into the man. “You’d better.”

“Trust in me, friend. I know my business.” Quest leaned forward and rested his hand briefly on Wolfe’s shoulder. “Now go back. Go back to the day that you were taken into custody. Do you remember?”

The reaction was immediate and terrible. Wolfe’s whole body tensed, shifted, and seemed to pull inward. His head did not rise, but Jess heard the change in his breathing from across the room. His skin went cold listening to that harsh, painful panting. But they couldn’t stop now. Wolfe had agreed to this.

“Tell me about the day you were taken to the prison,” Quest said. His voice was gentle, rising and falling in those faint, odd rhythms. “There is nothing to fear. You are only seeing, watching a play of light and shadow. You are an outside observer of what occurs. There is no pain. You feel no pain at all.”

The harsh breathing eased, just a little, but when Wolfe’s voice came, it sounded rough and uneven and utterly unlike him. “I was . . . here,” he said. “They came for me here.”

“Here, in this house?”

“Yes.”

“And where did they take you?”

“The Archivist’s office at the Serapeum,” Wolfe said. “He asked questions—”

“Let that go. Where were you taken after he finished with you?”

Wolfe didn’t answer. Beside him, Jess felt Santi’s muscles tensing, as if bracing for a blow.

“Scholar? Where were you taken?”

“Below.”

“Below where?”

“Serapeum. To a cell.”

“Stop,” Santi quickly said. “Skip over that. Ask him where he was taken after that.”

Quest gave Jess another questioning look, and he nodded. Santi was right. Asking Wolfe to recount whatever happened to him in the cells below the Serapeum in Alexandria wouldn’t help them at all. Thomas wasn’t there.

Paris,
Jess thought.
They’ll have taken him to Paris.

But when Wolfe answered the question, he said, “The Basilica Julia.”

Rome
. Jess swallowed hard as he remembered how passionately he’d argued for Paris with his friends; he’d nearly persuaded them it was the only logical choice and to go tearing off in pursuit of Thomas there.
Thank you, Khalila. Thank you for holding out for more information.
They wouldn’t have more than one chance at this.

And even this information, he cautioned himself, wasn’t true proof. An indicator, certainly. But not proof.

“How were you taken there?” Quest asked.

“By Translation.”

Quest leaned back, frowning, and looked at Captain Santi. “There isn’t a Translation Chamber inside the Basilica Julia proper, is there?”

“No,” Santi said. “It’s in another building altogether, about a mile away. He can’t be recalling it right.”

“Scholar Wolfe, when you came out of the Translation Chamber, where were you? Can you describe it?”

“Hallway,” Wolfe murmured. “Inside the Basilica Julia.”

“How do you know you were in the Basilica Julia?”

“I saw the Forum from the windows. I know Rome.” Of course he did. A traveling Scholar like Wolfe would recognize a great city like that from even the briefest glance. “A long, straight hallway. A door at the end.”

“Tell me what you could see from these windows,” Quest said, and Jess grabbed a piece of paper and a pen that Wolfe had left on the table.
He wrote as Wolfe described his view. Jess made a quick, rough sketch, marking exact things he’d seen. “All right. This door at the end of the hallway: was it guarded?”

“Automaton,” Wolfe said dully. “A Roman lion.”

“And was this door locked as well?” Quest asked. That was an excellent question Jess wouldn’t have thought to ask. The Mesmer obviously had some experience at this sort of thing.

“Yes.”

From there, Wolfe spoke of being led down steps, beside a long, sloping corridor of ancient stone, with cells built along one side. Turn after turn. Jess wrote it all down, and Quest continued his steady, passionless questions: how many soldiers did he see? How many Library automata? It was important, even critical, but Wolfe’s distress grew ever more visible the further they delved into this particular piece of the past. He moved back and forth now, a constant rocking motion, and his arms had closed over his stomach. Protecting himself, Jess realized. He felt sick himself, watching. Next to him, Santi was as still as a statue.

“Did anyone ever come to take you out of your cell while you were inside it?”

“Yes.”

“And where did they take you?” Quest asked, which seemed an innocent enough question. He was only trying to map the rest of the prison, which was smart.

Wolfe let out a sound that raised the hair on the back of Jess’s neck, and Santi almost lunged forward, but Quest’s gaze flicked to him and the Mesmer shook his head. “Breathe, Scholar Wolfe. Relax,” Quest said. “You feel no pain, remember? There is no pain now; you are merely watching this from a distance. It isn’t happening to you at all. Step back. Just step away and let it go.”

The terrible keening sound went on and grew sharper, and even the Mesmer seemed taken aback by it now. He reached out and put his hand on Wolfe’s shoulder. “Scholar,” he said. “
Scholar.
You are now outside of
the cell, do you hear me? You are standing outside the cell. There is no pain at all. You feel peaceful. Calm.”

It was no good. Wolfe’s buried scream was growing louder and he wasn’t listening.

“That’s enough,” Santi shouted, and lunged forward. “Bring him out! Now!” He sounded as shaken as Jess felt.

“All right,” Quest said. “Scholar Wolfe! Scholar!” He briskly tapped Wolfe’s forehead, then his shoulder, then the back of his hand. “
Exeunt!
”

Wolfe’s cry stopped cleanly, and he slumped back in his chair, utterly limp. Santi shoved Quest out of the way and sank down to a crouch beside Wolfe to take his hand. He was checking the other man’s pulse, Jess realized, as much as holding his hand.

Wolfe slowly raised his head. His color was terrible and his eyes looked dull and strange, but they were open, and after a blank moment that seemed to stretch forever, he looked directly at Santi and said, “It must have been terrible if you look so worried.”

Jess saw the intense relief flash over the captain’s face before his expression closed again. “Not so bad,” Santi lied. “And now you’re back.”

Wolfe put his hand over Santi’s, and there it was again: a little flash of gentleness, sorrow, love. Jess looked away, and when he turned back, Santi was rising to his feet and turning to Quest. “You, Mesmer,” Santi said. “Get out. If there’s any whisper about any of this, I’ll kill you.”