Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (27 page)

He’d just pushed the last tumbler in the lock when Khalila dropped down beside him and said, “How can I help?”

“You can get out of the light,” he said. “Are they coming?”

“Yes. Dario went to help them.” She stood up and looked back over the lion’s shoulder. “How did you know to do this?”

“What, lock picking? Comes naturally. I’m a criminal, remember?”

“I meant the lion, Jess.” She was waving now, giving urgent
hurry
signals. “Get the door open—they’re coming!”

They were. He heard the footsteps. Glain, ever the athlete, chose to throw herself under the lion, as Jess had, and slid neatly through, then rolled back to her feet and leaned on the still metallic body to aim her weapon back down the hallway. She fired, and Jess recognized the sound: stunning rounds, not lethal. She didn’t intend to kill her fellow High Garda soldiers, no matter what their orders might be.

Dario came next, and behind him . . . behind him came Santi, and . . . Scholar Wolfe. Wolfe, like Dario, wore Scholar’s robes, and his shoulder-length hair had been tied back in a tight knot. “Wolfe?” Jess spared a precious, astonished second to stare at him. Khalila jabbed him in the shoulder to remind him to keep working. “How did he get here?”

“Translation,” she said. “Santi wouldn’t leave him alone in Alexandria. That would have been a death sentence. Jess, are you sure you can—”

“Got it,” Jess said, as the last tumbler clicked and fell away. “Is he all right to be here, do you think? Wolfe?” He couldn’t shake the memory of Wolfe’s swallowed screams as the Mesmer tried to calm him. Whatever was buried under that calm, Elsinore Quest had been right: it was poisonous and powerful. Must have been hard to keep it locked away.

“I don’t know,” Khalila admitted, as Jess rose and pulled on the door’s handle. “I can’t imagine how it would feel to . . . go down there. But it’s
Wolfe.
We can’t leave him behind for the Archivist, can we?”

She was right. They were all in it together and would rise or fall
together. And Santi was staying close to Wolfe, only a step or two away, as if well aware of the risks.

Jess slammed the metal door back against the wall and took the lead, heading down a ramp into the dark. As his eyes adjusted, he realized there were lights, just low ones that blazed brighter as he approached—sensing his presence somehow.
There’ll be three more automata,
he remembered. The Alexandrian sphinxes would be smaller than the lions, though no less dangerous. The Spartan . . .

He didn’t know what to do about the Spartan.

The tunnel twisted to the left, and he looked back before he took the turn. Khalila and Glain were behind him, then Dario and Wolfe with Santi. As Jess turned the curving corner, he saw steps going down. The smooth plaster of the walls gave way to old Roman stone. The lights continued to brighten around them, and Jess moved as fast as he could.

A High Garda soldier stepped out into his path, and Jess prepared to shoot, but Santi put a hand on his shoulder. “No,” he said. “Sergeant Reynolds?”

The soldier lowered his weapon—not completely, just enough to ease Jess’s mind a little. “Captain Santi? Sir, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Let me pass.”

“I can’t do that, sir.”

Glain shot him. It was a quick, economical movement, and the stun round dropped the man to his knees. A second put him completely down. Santi checked the man’s pulse and nodded. He wasn’t happy, but Glain had done the right thing. Talking would get them killed.

The second soldier who came rushing in fired. Glain shot back, but he was wearing armor, and the stunning shot had no effect.

Jess had his weapon set to full strength and fired. He put two rounds into the armor, which was enough to knock the man down and unconscious, but—he hoped—not enough to kill.

A chorus of high-pitched shrieks split the air. There was another blind corner ahead, and beyond it would be the cells . . . and the sphinxes
were between them and Thomas.
Two of them. How do I stop two of them at once?
It seemed impossible now that he was here, listening to the screams coming closer.

“Khalila,” he said. “When the sphinx comes, there’s a depression underneath the jaw, behind the pharaoh’s beard. You need to press it. They should hesitate, seeing you in a Scholar’s robe and a gold band. I’ll get the other one.”

She stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes for an instant, then nodded. No discussion, no questions. She stood beside him, ready, as the two sphinxes rounded the corner together, loping out of rhythm with each other but with the same deadly grace. The one making for Jess screamed again and bared needle teeth, but the one on Khalila’s side of the hallway seemed confused. She held her hand up to show her gold band. It slowed, cocking its inhuman head.

Jess feinted to his left, and when the sphinx on his side lunged, he jammed his gun crosswise into the fearsome jaws. One of the paws swiped for him, and he heard Glain shout a warning even as he twisted to avoid it. He didn’t dare risk a glance at Khalila.
This
sphinx wasn’t going to hesitate to kill him, and he didn’t dare take even a second of attention away. It moved like a snake, like something unnaturally fluid, and his sweaty fingers slipped as he tried for the switch beneath the jaw. He missed, ducked a swipe, and heard metal crunching as the sphinx bit down on the gun. He tried for the switch again and got knocked off balance by a metallic head butt hard enough to send him flying backward. A massive paw armed with razor claws raked a path through the floor where he’d been. He hit, rolled off the wall, and came back low and fast.

This time, he flung himself around with one arm over the lion’s head and swung onto the beast’s back. The heat coming from it at this angle felt intense even through the layers of his uniform, but he ignored that, ignored the blood dripping from fingers that had grazed sharp claws on the way up, and wrapped both arms around the thing’s neck as it reared to try to throw him off. When it crashed down to four paws again, the
mangled gun fell from the sharp-toothed mouth, and the sphinx’s head whipped around at an impossible angle to bite.

He got to the switch, somehow, just before it sank those teeth into his neck.

As he slid down, leaving the sphinx frozen in that unnatural, twisted position, he realized that Khalila’s sphinx was equally still . . . in a crouch, at her feet, like a particularly dangerous pet.

“Maybe I should let you do this from now on,” he said with a grin that felt half-mad, and she let out a laugh at least as uncontrolled. “We’ve still got one soldier and a Spartan to deal with. Reinforcements will come.”

“Then we should hurry.”

That was a new voice coming from behind them, and as Jess turned, he saw Glain and Santi had beaten him to it with impressive speed. They leveled weapons at the newcomer making her way down the steps, and Santi lowered his weapon first.

Morgan.

Glain said, “It can’t be. How in Hades did you . . .”

Morgan smiled, but it wasn’t for Glain at all. She was looking through the rest of them, straight to Jess, and the smile was for him.

“I brought what I could,” she said. “But we have to go quickly. I disabled the Translation Chamber to keep reinforcements from coming through from Alexandria, but Captain Santi’s troops will respond soon, and we don’t want to have to kill anyone.”

“Morgan?” Khalila said, and then repeated it with more force. “Morgan!” She rushed to her and clasped her in an embrace—one that the English girl returned full force. “I didn’t think you could leave the Iron Tower!”

“That’s a story for later,” Morgan said. Jess couldn’t take his eyes from her.
How is she here?
The Translation Chamber, obviously, but . . . It hit him then that the collar around her neck was gone.

She was free.
Free.
Just as she’d said she’d be.

He couldn’t quite believe his eyes, until she pushed past the others
and wrapped her arms around him, and then he
had
to believe it—her familiar, remembered warmth, the scent of her hair, her skin. It felt right, having her in his embrace again.

Dario, of course, was the one to say, “Not that I’m not delighted to see you, too, Morgan, but can the welcomes wait? We’re on a schedule.”

He was right, of course, and Jess stepped away. Not without regret.

Glain wasn’t smiling. She was watching Morgan with cool, assessing eyes, and now she said, “This is strangely opportune timing. I thought it was impossible to escape the Iron Tower.”

“That’s what they want us to believe,” Morgan said. “There are several ways, actually, but getting the collar off was half the battle. I’ve spent months searching for a way to get out and stay out. When I found it, I waited until Scholar Wolfe made his move to join you. So the timing is exact.
Not
opportune.”

“You can understand her doubts,” Dario said, which was weaselly of him, sympathizing while still not agreeing. “We haven’t seen you since you were driven off by the Obscurist Magnus, apparently never to be seen again. One thing we know about the Library: it’s fully capable of turning us against each other.”

“You think you can’t trust me?” Morgan’s face set hard and she returned Glain’s stare, not Dario’s. “While you were being pampered and groomed, free to do as you liked, I was locked away. You have
no idea
where I’ve been.” She touched the skin at her throat: too pale, from long months of being circled by the collar. But the collar was gone. “I left my chains back in the Tower. And I’m not going back. If you don’t think you can trust me, fine—I’ll go my own way. But I’m not leaving until I see all of you safely out of here.”

Jess silently moved to her side, because suddenly there
were
sides, and at the very worst time. It lasted only a second, a terrible second, because Santi snapped, “No time for this. We trust her because we have to trust her. Now
go
.”

He moved past them, and Glain went with him. Dario and Khalila
were next, with Wolfe, who was also—to Jess’s slight surprise—armed. The gun blended in with his black robes.

He seemed to falter a little, as if the memories had overwhelmed him. Morgan held out her hand to him. Wolfe looked at it as if he’d never seen such a thing and walked on.

“Well,” she said, “he’s not changed at all.”

“Come on,” Jess said. “Dario’s right. There’s still Thomas to find.”

“I was so worried you’d move faster than I could and I’d be too late,” she said, and her grip on his hand grew stronger. Almost painful. “I knew you’d left Alexandria. I was afraid—afraid something terrible would happen to you.”

“To me?” He forced a smile he didn’t quite feel. “Nothing ever happens to me.”

“Oh, I remember you collapsing with a wound that almost killed you after Oxford. You don’t fool me.”

“Shh.” He’d heard a scrape, and his instincts had spiked hard enough to hurt. There was a blind corner just ahead, and Wolfe was already passing the turn.

The noise had come from
behind
them.

Jess pushed Morgan ahead of him, toward Wolfe, and—though he’d sworn seconds ago he never would—let go of her hand. His shove sent her stumbling into the wall at the corner, and she turned back with a surprised expression that turned to horror, and Jess knew.

He did the only thing he could: he threw himself hard to the side, into the old stone wall, and a sharp-tipped bronze spear stabbed hard down into the floor where he’d been standing.

The Spartan automaton pulled the spear back with economical grace, turned its head, and the red eyes blazed at Jess from a distance of only an arm’s length away. This was no sphinx, no lion; it was in the form of a man, muscled and lean. Upright.

It slammed its left forearm toward him, and Jess ducked. He didn’t quite move fast enough, and the blow that grazed the top of his head made
the world go soft and strange. Not pain, exactly, but he knew it was there somewhere, floating like a cloud that hadn’t quite rained yet.

“Jess!” Morgan’s scream pierced the fog like the Lighthouse’s focused beam, and he scrambled out of the way as the Spartan thrust down again. The spear tore through the leg of his uniform trousers and grazed his flesh; he felt skin part, but again, no pain. The spear’s tip was too sharp to hurt, like a Medica’s scalpel. He was seconds from dying and he knew it. All he could do was scramble and try to estimate where an engineer, a
good
engineer like Thomas, would have placed the safety switch for this particular design. He didn’t know. It looked like a man, taller and broader and faster than a man. The face under the Spartan helmet was unmoving, as uncaring as any beast.
It won’t bite, at least,
he thought. The mouth was half-hidden under the helmet . . .

The helmet?
No, too high up. He’d never reach it. If he tried any approach from the front, he’d be killed before he could even try a switch, if one even existed in a spot he could find.

He was going to die. Maybe he’d known that from the first moment he’d seen the Spartan automaton on the High Garda grounds. He remembered feeling a shiver of premonition about it.

His brain was racing like a river in full flood, uncontrollable in its search for some way to survive. It directed his body without conscious thought, rolling, diving, scrambling on all fours like a crab, and when the Spartan lifted one sandaled foot to crush him, he remembered something.

Something from a favorite book he’d read a dozen times as a child.
Talos, the bronze titan who fought Jason and his men aboard the
Argo
. A metal man who could not be hurt, could not be defeated.

Talos had been stopped by the removal of a plug at his heel, which had drained away the vital fluid that moved him. So the story went.

The engineers who’d designed the Spartan had read the same stories, dreamed the same dreams.

Jess hit the ground behind the Spartan and reached out blindly for the
backs of the statue’s legs with both hands, sliding fingers down the unnaturally warm bronze. It twisted around, shifting position to spear him like a fish. He saw the head tilting down toward him. The spear lifting.