Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (33 page)

M
organ embraced him with wild strength when he reached her, but it was only a moment’s pause before they began running down the corridor after Wolfe and Khalila. “Where’s Glain?” he asked, and looked back. Thomas was helping Glain limp along; he’d ripped a strip from the black Scholar’s robe to bind the hole in her leg, but she was still leaving a bloody trail of footprints behind.

“We need to get her help,” Morgan said. “She’s losing too much blood.”

“Glain’s too damned tough to die,” he said, but Morgan didn’t smile. She looked grim and scared, and he thought she ought to be. Their chances of surviving this day were looking smaller and smaller. They’d lost Dario; Glain was badly hurt. It had been a matter of seconds between his neck and a lion’s jaws.

The odds were good that someone was going to die before they got out.

The Translation Chamber lay at the end of the hallway, a simple open alcove and a round room like the others Jess had seen; he realized only now that it had much in common with the round room below them, in the prison, where torture equipment had been set up. The difference was
simply in usage. This room, too, was lined with tiled mosaics of gods and monsters, kings and warriors. In the center of it lay a marble couch in the old Roman style, and a helmet that reminded him of the ancient legions. It was connected by a thick, flexible metal cable that descended from a hole in the ceiling. Like the Translation Chamber at Darnah, it was otherwise empty—no, even more barren. Not even a bucket and sink for those who might get sick.

And, more meaningfully, no guards. No Obscurist.

“Can you do this?” he asked Morgan, and pointed to the couch, the helmet. “Turn it back on?”

“Yes,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“London,” Jess said, and looked at Santi and Wolfe for confirmation. Wolfe shook his head sharply.

“Word is that the Welsh are already there,” Santi said. “They’re making quick work of English defenses. We could be trapped in the fighting, and how do you know your family hasn’t already pulled out?”

Jess turned to Morgan. “Can you send a message to my father on the Codex, and make sure no one else sees it? I can give it to you in code.”

“I think so. What do you want to say?”

“Tell him I’ll meet him at the warehouse. He’ll understand. If he’s not still in town, he’ll warn us off.”

“I’ll need a Codex,” Morgan said. Khalila ran back down the hall and retrieved one from a fallen soldier. Jess wrote out the words in code on a scrap of Glaudino’s note pages, and Morgan quickly copied it into the message page. Her words, Jess realized, didn’t even show on the page at all, as if the ink erased itself as soon as she put it to paper.

They waited tensely for a moment, and then the reply was written out in Callum Brightwell’s spiky, urgent hand:
Go careful.

“He’s still there,” Jess said. “In London.”

“We still have a problem. The Serapeum is guarded,” Wolfe said.

“Not as much of a problem as you would think,” Santi replied. “The
High Garda will be out defending the perimeter; London Garda will be engaged with the Welsh. There are three of us in uniform—that’s enough to cause confusion until we can win our way free. I know where the Translation Chamber is. We can make it outside, if your father can send us to safety after.” Santi studied Jess with cold intensity. “Will he? No half-truths this time.”

“He will,” Jess said, and then swallowed hard. “For a price. He’ll need something in trade.”

“Something,” Santi repeated. “Such as?”

“I don’t know,” Jess said. “I’ll think of something.” But he already knew. His father would highly value the information about how to switch off the automata, but if it wasn’t enough, Jess could offer the precious volume he’d translated for Thomas about the creatures. That was enough to buy all their lives ten times over. “We don’t have much choice, do we?”

Santi didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. They were well committed now, and any delays might mean capture, imprisonment, death.

Jess stretched out on the marble couch. “I’ll go first,” he said. “I’ll distract them with a story about fleeing a sneak attack on the High Garda in Rome. Send Glain after me.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise,” Khalila said. “She’s injured.”

“That’s why she has to go next,” he said. “If I’m alone telling the story and she arrives . . .”

“It’s confirmation.” Santi nodded. “All right. Morgan, if you can do this, you’d better do it now.”

There wasn’t much choice. Morgan fitted the helmet over Jess’s head. He muttered the standard good-luck phrase under his breath and waited for the mouth of the wolf to close over him . . . But those jaws never shut. He felt the pressure of Morgan’s hands on the helmet, but there was no surge of energy. No power ripping him apart.

He tilted his head to look back at her. “What’s happening?”

Her eyes were round and shocked, and she said, “I don’t know! It’s as if—as if I’m blocked from that path. It won’t
let
me send you to London!”

“Is it malfunctioning?” Wolfe demanded. “Because we can’t stay here, Morgan.”

“I know! It’s not . . . The power’s there, but it’s only letting me go . . .” Morgan closed her eyes a moment, and Jess felt something this time—a slight tingle, like a surge of static electricity. She caught her breath and whispered, “No. Oh God,
no
!”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Jess sat up and stripped the helmet off. Morgan’s eyes were filled with tears, her hands trembling as she raised them to cover her mouth. When she met his eyes, the tears spilled over. “Morgan!”

She gulped back what seemed like sheer panic, and looked from him to Wolfe as she dragged her hands back down and balled them into fists.

“I’m so sorry. They must have— They must have known we’d try this. I can take you only one place from here,” she said. “Just one.”

“Where?”

“Alexandria,” she whispered. “Into the Iron Tower.”

Wolfe stared for a moment, black eyes gone blank, and then shifted to send Santi a look. “This is my mother’s doing.”

Jess dumped the helmet on the floor with a crash. “We can’t go back to Alexandria. We have to fight.”

“Then we’ll die,” Santi said flatly. “And Glain won’t survive that injury unless she gets help quickly. We can give up, or we can take a chance. The Obscurist isn’t pledged to be loyal to the Archivist. She’s loyal to the Library. There’s a difference.”

“Hairsplitting,” Wolfe said, but then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Nic is right. We must chance it. It’s that, die fighting, or—” He didn’t need to state the alternative. They’d all seen it below in the cells. The torture chamber.

“Not the Tower,” Morgan whispered, and it was just for Jess. “I can’t go back there. Jess—”

He grabbed her hand and held fast. “Yes, you can,” he said. “I’ll be with you. I promise, I’m not leaving you.”

“Jess!” The wordless plea in her face hurt him, because he knew he had no way to answer it. He shook his head and saw the light go out in her eyes. He’d just betrayed her. Again.

“We’re agreed?” Santi asked, and one by one they nodded. Even Morgan, though the pallor on her face spoke louder than words. “Go.”

Jess settled the helmet over his head and felt Morgan’s trembling, powerful hands come down on it. And this time,
in bocca al lupo,
the lightning came, and struck him apart into pieces and sent him shrieking into the dark.

An excerpt from the personal journal of Obscurist Magnus Keria Morning (interdicted to Black Archives)

I have always tried to believe. Always.

When I learned that, as late as three hundred years ago, Obscurists were allowed the same freedom as other Scholars, that the Iron Tower was only a place of work and study, and not our gilded prison, I accepted that these changes were made purely for our own protection.

Then I read in the Black Archives that two hundred years ago, the Library ruthlessly crushed a revolt by the families of those kept here with us—our children, our lovers, our husbands and wives. Those we loved were killed or exiled. The Archivist set new rules. Crueler rules. We could no longer keep our families or even our children, unless the children were gifted as Obscurists.

My great-great-grandmother remembered a time when her husband lived here, and her children. She lost the ungifted in the revolt. It was not so very long ago, this change. This terrible, cruel desperation of our Archivists, striving to cling to power that is slipping away from them.

Maybe if I had not read so much, did not know so much, I wouldn’t see how we live now as a horror. But I think it is just that. The Library, in its terror of losing a grip on us, has crushed us instead. Maybe the dwindling number of children born with quintessence is a sign that the Library’s stranglehold is destroying us, and that the Library’s days are numbered.

For myself, I should have never let them take my son away from me, or allowed them to take all those sons and daughters we still mourn. I hate every moment of my life as the jailor of this prison. I hate even more the necessity to follow these rules or be replaced by someone much, much crueler.

I am resigned to my fate. No matter what it costs, I will try to make it right in the end.

Keria Morning

Obscurist Magnus

In what I pray will be the last days of the Iron Tower.

A
rriving in the Iron Tower was not what Jess expected, though he hadn’t known
what
to expect, really. Guards seizing him? A sphinx pinning him down with a crushing paw? He did
not
expect to find himself coming awake in a garden of fresh, flowering plants: English roses, tulips from Holland, a blooming cherry tree from Japan gently shading the low, padded couch on which he lay. The rich, gentle scent of flowers and herbs filled the air, and he breathed it in over and over. It settled his stomach and filled him with a kind of calm he hadn’t ever known before.

Jess rolled off the couch and to his feet, and felt only a little unsteady—mostly from the beating he’d taken back in Rome—and saw an Obscurist sitting on a nearby folding chair. He was an older man, with handsome, sharp features that spoke of Eastern Europe, possibly Russia, and he nodded calmly at Jess. “Put the weapon down, please,” he said. “You may, of course, keep it if it makes you comfortable. Just don’t point it at me.”

Jess was still clutching his weapon in a nervous grip, but the man’s quiet assurance made him feel a little ashamed of that. He angled the gun down. The Obscurist nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Now sit down. There’s tea.”

The garden room stretched high in an arch, but it wasn’t open to the sun; light poured in from windows that circled the round walls, and from them Jess saw the familiar layout of the city of Alexandria—this
time from a very great height. The only building that rose higher was the Serapeum, and he could see the tip of the pyramid stretching up another giant’s reach above this place.

The garden around him spread out huge and bursting with colors, and it gave him a sense of the incredible scale of this tower. He’d always known it was huge, but never quite
this
large.

A city in its own right, surely.

Jess sat down on a bench and poured himself a cup of hot tea from the waiting pot; his hands were steady enough to hold it now, at least. As he drank, Glain came through. She arrived unconscious, and blood leaked in thick drips from the sodden cloth of her uniform’s trouser leg onto the couch. The Obscurist stood up, suddenly very tall and active, and went to her side. He pressed a silver symbol on his collar and said, “I need Medica here in the Translation Chamber. Now.” He picked Glain up—and she was not a light burden, Jess knew—and moved her to a clear spot on the floor, then clamped a strong hand over the wound in her leg to slow the loss of blood. “You’ll need to assist your other friends,” he told Jess. “I’m Gregory, by the way.”

“Jess Brightwell, sir,” Jess said. “Thank you.” This all seemed so strange. He’d expected to arrive in a dark, forbidding world filled with angry soldiers ready to take them down, or, at least, in a place no better than the torture chamber beneath the basilica. But there was a kindly man and tea, flowers, and a Medica team hurrying now into the garden to tend to Glain. Maybe they had no idea they were welcoming fugitives, sworn enemies of the Archivist. Maybe word hadn’t come here at all, and once it did, the bars would finally close in on them.

He drank all the tea quickly, just in case. It was the first liquid he’d had in what seemed like hours, and he was severely thirsty. His uniform hung heavy with sweat and bloody from cuts. The one on his palm had split open again, and he took out his field kit and wrapped it in a fresh bandage. He was tying it off as Khalila came through. She seemed as
dazed as he still felt by their new surroundings, and he got up to help her to the bench and pour her a cup of tea.

“What is this?” she asked, as if she truly couldn’t comprehend it. Her head scarf had come askew, and strands of her glossy, dark hair showed around her face. She dragged it off and repinned it without the slightest self-consciousness, as if he were family. He appreciated that. “Where are we? Is this the Iron Tower? I thought—”

“You thought it would be grimmer,” said Gregory, the Obscurist, as he got to his feet and came to them. “Well, you wouldn’t be alone in that, I’m sure. But it
is
our home, and we make it as pleasant as we can. How many of you will there be?”

“If we all make it through? Four more.” Dario’s loss seemed greater now, their decision to leave without him even worse. He knew that was what Khalila was thinking, too. He could see it in the miserable hunch of her shoulders. “Dario will be all right, Khalila. He’s clever.”

“I know,” she said. “And he does know Rome. He spent time there when he was younger. His father was an ambassador for Spain.” Jess had always known Dario came from wealth and influence, but not quite
that
much influence. “I think, if he were in real trouble, he would go to the embassy. They would hide him, at the very least, and get him back to Spain, where his family could find him a safe place. But I think he’ll want to find us again.”

“You mean, find
you
again,” Jess said. “I doubt he gives a rusty
geneih
about my future.”

“You wrong him. You always do.” He put an arm around her, and she sighed and relaxed against him, just a little. “I missed this. Being together. You’ve always been like a brother to me, from the moment I met you.”

“Ouch,” he said, but eased it with a smile. “I never had designs on you, Khalila. I like being someone you can rely on, as much as I rely on you.”

“Jess. You don’t rely on anyone.”

“I do,” he said. “It comes as a surprise to me, too.”

Thomas came through, and was promptly and violently sick—no surprise, since he’d been struggling with so much, for so long. Gregory calmly went for a mop and bucket to clean up after him, and Jess and Khalila moved the boy to the bench, poured him tea, and helped him lie flat when it seemed he needed that more than the restorative. By the time they’d gotten Thomas settled, Wolfe arrived, then Santi immediately after.

Jess stared hard at the couch, so hard he could feel a vein pulsing in his temple.
Come on,
he begged her.
Come on, don’t dally around. Don’t let them take you!

When Morgan’s form coalesced in a red cloud of blood, bone, and muscle, he was instantly on his feet and moving toward her. By the time she was gasping her first breath, he was at her side. Holding her hand.

She jackknifed up into his embrace with a horrible, choking cry and locked her arms around him like she expected to be dragged away. “No,” she whispered into the fabric of his shirt. “No.”

He smoothed her hair and pressed his lips to the salty skin of her temple. “Morgan. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, and her whole body shook with the force of her gasp for breath. “I can’t do it again. There’s no other way out. They’ll lock me here for good, and I can’t, I can’t . . .”

“Nobody’s locking you in,” he told her, and he meant it. “But we need to find out what the Obscurist wants from us. Trust me? I won’t let you down, Morgan. Not this time.”

She shuddered and relaxed, just a little—enough that he was able to loosen her panicked grip on him. Jess helped her to the bench, the tea, and then turned to Santi and Wolfe, who were standing and talking to Gregory. Glain’s leg had been efficiently bandaged and she was being carried off to a surgery for repair of the torn muscle and blood vessels; on the way out, Jess reached out to brush her fingers, and she gave him a brisk, almost normal nod.

“You’re in charge until I get back,” she told him. It was half a joke, and half not.

He nodded back. “Not sure what I’m in charge of,” he said, “but I’ll do what I can. Glain. Don’t die on me.”

“Well,” she said, and managed a weak, strange smile. “As long as it’s an order, sir.”

As they carried Glain away, the Obscurist Magnus appeared from a staircase, trailing an entourage of more than a dozen others who all wore the golden collars of service to the Iron Tower.

Wolfe’s mother. She wore her age well and was beautiful in her own striking way. She also wore power like a crackling cloak, and Jess could feel the snap of it halfway across the room. Every head bowed as she passed, and even Niccolo Santi took a step back and nodded in tribute as she approached.

Not her son, though. Wolfe stared at her as if she were a stranger, and said, “What is this? Are you planning to bargain with the Archivist? Use us as your chips?”

It was a sharp observation. After all, the Iron Tower now had something the Archivist wanted very badly, and all neatly tied with a gift ribbon: Wolfe, Santi, the young rebel Scholars, and an escaped Library prisoner. Quite a lever, if she chose to use it to move the man who ruled the Library. And the Obscurist surely hadn’t gained, or held, her position by being politically inept all these years.

The Obscurist put a hand against his cheek. It was a contact that lasted less than a second, because he quickly stepped back. “Do you really think I would do that, Christopher? Do you think so little of me?”

“No,” he said. “I think so much of your sense of responsibility to the people in this tower. I’m a secondary concern at best. As ever.”

He couldn’t have hurt her worse if he’d stabbed her, but it was visible for only a moment. Her expression stayed the same, except for a slight chill in her eyes. “Everyone in this tower is my family,” she said. “You, of all people, know that. They’re
your
family. You were born here. Raised
here. And, yes, it hurt to send you away, but you know why it had to be done. I’ve never stopped watching over you. I never will.”

Jess tried to imagine those words coming from his own parents and failed. He knew other families loved on that level; he’d seen it, like glimpses into a warm room from a cold street. But it was an alien thing to him, caring so much. He’d never experienced it until he’d—all unwillingly—begun to care about these people here in Alexandria.

His . . . family
.

“You won’t hide us from the Archivist,” Wolfe told his mother, and then, after a brief pause, asked, “Will you?”

“That would be impossible. I can delay him for a bit,” she said. “Enough time to plan for what you will do next. I’m not the Archivist’s creature. I know that everything you’ve done has been for the good of the Library’s mission. For its soul. No matter how you feel about me as a mother, I love you as my son.”

Wolfe walked over to inspect something in the garden—mostly, Jess thought, to hide a sudden vulnerability. The Obscurist watched him with a gentle, sad expression, then turned from him to Santi and gave him a wan smile. “Nic,” she said. “I’m sorry. Seeing you here means you’ve given up so much today. You’ve worked so hard to secure your place in the High Garda.”

Santi shrugged. “I always said, if it comes to a choice between him and the Library, I’d choose him,” he said. “I love him. That means I protect him, doesn’t it?”

“It means everything. I’m glad you’re all right. You’re nearly as dear to me as he is.” Her words must have offended Wolfe, because he gave her a black look and moved farther away. His mother’s gaze followed him. Worried. “You took him into the basilica? What were you thinking?”

“I had to bring him with us,” Santi said quietly. “If I’d left him behind, he’d have been arrested and ended up dead, or worse. At least it kept him alive.”

“Perhaps, but it’s certainly taken a toll,” she said. “I can see it, though he’s hiding it well. I hope time here can help heal that.”

Santi considered that for a moment, then said, in the same level voice as before, “Lady Keria, I respect you, but if you try to betray him in any way, I’ll kill you. You understand? He’s had enough pain from this place, too. And from you.”

He’d finally pierced her calm, at least a little, and her eyes—so like her son’s—flashed. “Do you think it’s easy, watching your son suffer while you stand by doing nothing? Don’t you think I want him to understand—” The Obscurist stopped herself, let a beat of silence go by, and then said, “Very well. If I ever betray him again, or you, then by all means, kill me.”

Santi blinked, but said nothing.
She managed to surprise him,
Jess thought. And then the Obscurist’s gaze turned to their little group: Khalila, Jess, Morgan, Thomas occupying the whole of a second bench. Morgan kept her gaze fixed down on her feet as the Obscurist approached, until the woman’s fingers under her chin forced her head up again. Morgan didn’t flinch, and she didn’t look away once their eyes had locked, even while the Obscurist reached for the silk scarf around her neck and tugged it loose to reveal the fish-pale skin of her throat.

“Incredible,” the Obscurist said. “I’ve never met anyone with your power or your blind foolishness. If you think it gives you some kind of invulnerability, you don’t understand the stakes.”

Morgan slapped the Obscurist’s hand away from her scarf. The collared guards nearby tensed, hands closing tight around knives, but the Obscurist gave them a shake of her head. “I won’t be caged up here! I won’t be made into some slave—no, worse than that. Some mindless part in a machine, replaced when it breaks.”

“You’re far more than an automaton,” the Obscurist told her. “You’re worth more than most people who will ever be born on this earth, Morgan. Archimedes taught that of all the five elements, quintessence is the
most rare, the most valuable, the one that transmutes the ordinary into the extraordinary.
We
are quintessence. It’s a divine gift, and like all gifts, we must use it for the Library’s greater glory.”