Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (26 page)

Text of a letter from the Archivist Magnus to the Artifex Magnus, interdicted to the Black Archives by order of the Archivist

It was a true tragedy to lose Scholar Prakesh in such a useless fashion; she was an extraordinarily bright woman. Just more proof that Wolfe’s toxic influence has spread on to his students as well. Without her exposure to Santiago, no doubt she would have served the Library faithfully for the rest of her life.

We are reaching an impasse with the Obscurist Magnus as well. It might be necessary to bring her to heel one last time, by whatever means necessary. Her son might be broken, but he can still turn and bite. If you see any reason to suspect such might happen, make it clear to him that we have gathered up all those he cares for.

That should keep him in check, and, through him, his mother.

If not . . . well. You know my thoughts.

H
e arrived back just as his fellow soldiers were starting to wake, and except for the fact that he was already wearing his uniform, no one gave him a second look. He sat on his bunk and ate a pressed fruit from his pack, and wondered how to tell the others what he’d found. Too many ears. They needed privacy.

Glain could see he had news. She was clever enough not to ask, but he saw the level stare and the tilt of her head.
What is she seeing?
He had no idea. He was usually better at hiding in plain sight than that. Maybe it was the flush of triumph he couldn’t quite shake. He just hoped that turning off the sentry lion hadn’t triggered some alarms that would make exiting that way harder.

“You look happy,” she said to him, and took half his ration bar.

“Help yourself,” he said mildly. “It’s going to be a long day.”

She gave him a narrow look, which he answered with a grin, and then it was too late to play question games, as their squad leader called them to order. Jess fell into line beside Glain. Squad Leader Rollison walked down the line and fixed them each with a direct yet impersonal stare.

“Good work yesterday,” he said. “So said the Artifex himself. We don’t get to earn that praise again today, because today, the Artifex leaves the basilica and visits the Roman Senate, and we’re staying here. The rest of our century arrived overnight and will be guarding the route and the
Senate. Our job today is to keep the basilica safe, and, to that end, we’ll be conducting roving patrols. Those of you who don’t like sunshine, Burners, or those damned Roman lions, here’s some happy news for you: we’ll be staying inside. Those who were hoping for more glory today—and I mean you, Brightwell—you’ll have to live with disappointment.”

“Yes, sir,” Jess said. “I’ll try to contain myself, sir.”

Lucky. Too lucky.
He sensed some hand behind yet another windfall of good fortune, but he didn’t know where to look. Could be the Artifex, setting him—setting all of them—up for a disaster. Or, rather more unlikely, it could be a better angel looking out for them.

“Routes,” Troll said, and all of them got out their Codices. He scribbled down a map and labeled their names on hallways, and it appeared in rapid, neat strokes on the page in Jess’s Codex assigned for orders. Jess had been paired with Glain, which seemed natural enough; Troll would have recognized they worked well together.

The hall they’d been given to patrol ran the length of the first floor on the Forum side of the building. Jess remembered the maps he sketched out last night and the one that he’d drawn from Wolfe’s Mesmer session, and stacked them one atop another in his mind to see the differences.

Wolfe’s secret hall, the one that led from a concealed inner portal to the door that led down to the prisons, was on the other side of the wall from where they’d been assigned. Convenient, that. Too damned convenient. His feeling that they’d
just so happened
to be assigned here today and that they’d
just so happened
to be given a patrol so near to the secret prison entrance . . . it raised an itch on the back of his neck.

Better angels, or conniving demons. Something nipped at his heels.

He silently kitted up with the armored Library coat and his weapons, and found Glain—of course—ready before him. Rollison was checking off his squad as they left the room, and held out a hand to keep Glain and Jess back. They were the last out of the room.

Troll turned to Glain and Jess, closed his Codex, and said, “Follow me.”

“Sir?” Glain said, but complied. He didn’t explain, just set off at a
quick pace. They fell in behind him as he led the way through a maze of doors that finally ended in a blind storage area lined with shelves.

“What is this?” Glain asked, and added only as an afterthought, “Sir.”

“It’s where you wait,” he said. “Captain Santi and the others are coming. Don’t worry, I’m— I can’t say I’m one of you, but I’ve known Captain Santi a long time. He and my father were friends back in training. After my father died, he and Wolfe made sure I had a place to live, enough to eat. I owe him this much.”

He turned to go. Glain grabbed his shoulder. “Wait,” she said. “Do you know what—”

Troll brushed her hand away with a move so smooth it almost seemed effortless. “No. I don’t want to know. It’s a favor for a friend, and that’s where it ends. When you’re done here, make your patrols.”

He left without a backward glance and shut the door. Glain frowned after him and said, “Do you trust him?”

“Do we have a choice?” Jess leaned against the wall. “I found the tunnel Dario talked about. It’s clear all the way down. I could hear footsteps above, and they weren’t from the basilica. They had to be from inside the prison.”

“No guards?”

“There was an automaton lion,” he said. “I took care of it.” He tried to sound offhand about it.

“You
what
?”

“Off switch,” he said. “I told you, I did it to a sphinx the night everything went wrong with Dario.”

She thought about it and shuddered. “That was a sphinx. I’ve seen the size of these lions. Not sure I’d have tried facing one down there in the dark. And you should have let me know what you were doing! If you hadn’t come back . . .”

She was right, of course. He should have left word. It had been a stupid risk; that fact had finally registered with the rising of the sun, and he could have disappeared without a trace into the dark, crushed and
rotting beneath the prison. Worse than that, he could have destroyed any chance they had of finding Thomas. “Sorry.”

“Do it again and I’ll kill what the automaton doesn’t eat.” She meant it—or thought she did. Her Welsh lilt came out strong when she said it. He didn’t have time to reply—if he’d thought of anything to say to that—because there was a noise beyond the door, and as they both turned that direction, it swung open.

Santi. Khalila. Dario. Santi wore his uniform and carried a full pack and weapons. Khalila had opted for a dark gray dress with her robe thrown over the top and a head scarf, and carried a pack of her own. Dario was in plain, sturdy clothes and his Scholar’s robe. They all looked tense.

“Someone tried to kill Captain Santi,” Khalila blurted.

Glain, who’d been about to speak, was stunned into silence, so Jess jumped in.

“What? How?”

“Poison in the fruit in my room,” he said. “No way to know who put it there, but I think we can guess.”

“The Artifex.”

“He’s done toying with us, and I think he’ll close his trap now . . . He deliberately left us all behind while he went off to the Senate. We’re out of time.”

“But we didn’t bring all our things,” Khalila said. “Can we go back for them?”

“No. You can’t. If you turn back, you stay behind. Are you staying?”

“Don’t rush us,” Dario snapped. “It’s a big decision, you know, to turn our backs on our futures. Our families. Everything we’ve ever believed.”

“No, it isn’t,” Khalila said, and took in a deep breath. “We’ve been thinking about this for a long time, Dario. I thought we’d already decided where our loyalty had to lie. Mine is with them. Is yours?”

“Sweet flower . . .”

“Don’t. If you want to go, just go. This isn’t the time for your charm.”

Dario studied her and then slowly nodded. “All right,” he said. “All right. Yes. We go.”

Santi looked grim, and never more in command. “We go. Now.”

The timing is terrible,
Jess thought; he had everything he would carry for a duty patrol, but no extras. The rest of his kit was still back stowed beneath his bunk.
It will have to stay there
. He’d abandoned more things than he’d kept in his life, anyway.

“The hallway Wolfe talked about is on the other side of the far wall, the one with the statues,” Jess said. “Probably some access. I’d guess behind the statues, through one of the alcoves.”

“According to Wolfe, there will be guards and an Obscurist on duty in the Translation Chamber on the other side of the wall; Glain and I will take care of that. At the end of the hall, there’s an automaton and a door. I have Greek fire for the automaton . . .”

“No,” Jess said. “I can get us past it.” Santi looked at him and frowned. Jess met his gaze and held it. “I can, sir. We both know using Greek fire in a confined space is risky at best.”

“All right.” Santi didn’t sound convinced. “Jess will get us past the automaton. After that, the locked door.” Jess nodded at that, too. “And then we go down into the tunnel. There will be more automata. Three of them, according to Christopher. Two sphinxes and a Spartan. Can you disarm those as well?”

“I can get the sphinxes,” Jess said. “I don’t know about the Spartan, sir.”

“That’ll have to do. There are four High Garda on duty in the prison. If I know any of them, I’m going to try to save them, but if not . . . If not, we may have to fight. If it comes to that, let me, Glain, and Jess take the lead.” He turned to Jess. “You scouted the tunnel exit that Khalila and Dario discovered,” Santi said. “Is it clear?”

“How did you know I—”

“I know you. Is it clear?”

“Yes.”

Santi took in a breath. “Then we go.”

As simply as that, they were abandoning all they’d planned for their lives, all they’d worked toward. For Santi, it meant throwing away an entire career spent gathering honor and trust within the Library. For Glain, the destruction of a dream she’d held since childhood. For Khalila, a future so bright, Jess couldn’t bear to think of snuffing it out. Even Dario was giving up something priceless.

I’m the only one who has nothing much to lose,
he thought. He’d already lost all the illusions that had brought him to this moment. What he had left now was just a hope that whatever came after this would prove to be better.

One by one, they nodded.

And they headed for the hallway that Jess and Glain had been assigned to patrol.

“What about Wolfe?” Jess asked. “He’s alone in Alexandria. Anything could happen to him there, especially once they know what we’ve done. He’ll be executed.”

“No,” Santi said. “It’s taken care of. Now spread out and find the entrance.” He stepped up to the nearest statue—the one of Minerva—and felt around behind her in the alcove. Jess held back, letting his gaze move over the gods in succession . . . and settling on one in particular. Pluto. Roman god of the underworld.

He stepped up and felt behind, along the smooth plaster of the alcove. Nothing. But as he did, he braced himself on Pluto’s marble arm, and it moved beneath the black toga the statue wore.

The alcove clicked open.

“Here,” Jess said. “Come on.”

“Dario, bring up the rear. Keep watch,” Santi said. He had his weapon ready, and, Jess realized, so did Glain. Jess quickly followed their lead and waited at the opening. “Jess, go right and see to the automaton. Glain and I go left. Dario, Khalila, stay here until we signal.”

Jess ducked through and immediately turned right. The hallway was just as Wolfe had described it in his Mesmeric trance—a long, straight run
with windows that overlooked the Forum. Not glass, certainly, because that would make them easy targets for vandals or Burners. These would be made of something harder and unbreakable. No use giving a desperate captive the chance to throw himself out and escape, either.

Jess heard the lion’s rumbling growl before he’d taken three running steps in its direction and slowed to a fast walk. The lion wasn’t waiting for him; it was pacing toward him, the cabled length of its tail twitching side to side and slamming into walls and windows. It left gouges where it hit. The creature was a big thing, the same size as the one he’d faced down in the tunnels. Seeing it coming at him in harsh daylight was chilling indeed.

You know this. You can do this.
The problem was that this lion was in motion, and very probably about to break into a run; it didn’t have the same confusion the one in the tunnel had shown, and it was
not
undecided about the situation. It had been built to respond to intruders, no matter what uniforms they wore.

Jess broke into a run again, closing the distance fast, and ten steps from it, he threw himself into a slide on the slick marble floor. The lion, confused, tried to slow, but momentum wouldn’t allow it to check so quickly. Jess slid right underneath its open jaws, which hit the floor with a heavy
clang
just as his head cleared the space, and grabbed one of the thick metal legs to stop his slide. At the same time, he reached up for the depression beneath the lion’s jaw, found it, and pressed as hard as he could.

He heard the roar that had been building inside the thing skew to a strange whining noise and die. The lion took another step forward and froze.

Jess pushed himself out from behind it and cut his arm on the tail when he grabbed hold to stand up; the barbed end of it, he realized, was razor sharp. Even standing still, the thing was capable of harm.

The door lay just beyond—locked, as Wolfe had said. Jess never left without his handy set of picklocks—the lesson of a devious childhood—and pulled them out of the pack and set to work as quickly as he could.
He heard the sounds of fighting behind him. Wolfe and Glain must have met with resistance.