Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (36 page)

Or children,
he thought before he could stop himself. Rosa, with her self-satisfied glow and pointed jibes, made it clear just how Morgan was being taunted.

“Morgan,” he said quietly. “Who’s Sybilla?”

She froze for an instant in the act of reaching for her water glass, then completed the motion, drank, and set it down before she said, “A friend.”

“And she’s ill?”

Morgan said nothing, but Wolfe did. He looked angry. “Not ill. Leave it, Brightwell.”

Another awkward silence, one Thomas moved to fill with a patently false cheer.

“Do you know the Tower already?” Thomas asked Wolfe. “You lived here. Such wondrous inventions they have here, I’d love to hear about all—”

“My mother determined I was without significant talent as an Obscurist when I was five years old,” Wolfe broke in. “At ten, I was removed to the Library orphanage, where I received my training. I’ve never been back. So I know little about the inventions, Thomas.”

“A lot of time between visits from your mother,” Santi said. He was watching Wolfe closely, a cup of poured wine forgotten in his hand.

“Not long enough. I saw her the day they released me from the Basilica Julia prison,” Wolfe said. “She brought me home. To you. She left before you found me.”

Silence at the table. Santi opened his mouth and closed it again, as if he couldn’t decide what to ask or what to say; he finally just drank his wine. Wolfe followed suit.

The mood had fallen a little dark, and grew darker with the sudden approach of Gregory, who smiled at them as if they were old friends. “Obscurist Hault,” he said. “Your presence is requested. Dominic has missed you during your absences. Please come with me.”

Dominic, Jess realized, must be the red-haired young man who stood a few paces back. He was small, compact, and covered in a spray of freckles . . . and miserable. Jess had been prepared to hate him, but seeing how he avoided even so much as looking in Morgan’s direction, he understood with blinding speed it wasn’t the boy’s choice, either.

Just a duty to be done.

Jess was rising to his feet to do something violent—to Gregory, if not to Dominic—when Wolfe quickly stood, faced Gregory, and said, “I’d have thought you’d have learned some manners at your age, but you’re as bad as you were when I was a child. You’ll have her the rest of her life. Isn’t that enough?”

Gregory straightened to face Scholar Wolfe, and Jess realized there
was real dislike between these two. It bordered on hate. For all Gregory’s droll observations, he wasn’t remotely friendly. There was something dark underneath his smile—more like a smirk now. Unpleasant and superior. “Keria’s always favored you,” he said. “Her precious little boy, born a disappointment. She fought to keep you long past the age when you should have been sent away, and when you finally were, she still never forgot you. All her love was reserved for you, and you can’t even give her a kind word in return.”

“She doesn’t look to me for kind words. She has you for that. You were ever the politician. And the predator.”

Gregory’s smile froze in place, and shattered into a compressed, hard line. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing,” Wolfe said. “Except that you take a special, unseemly delight in your job.”

“And what do you think I do?”

“Play God with the lives of children.”

“Obscurist Hault is not a child. She is a young woman of tremendous potential who might one day prove as important as, if not more important than, your own mother. It’s in the best interests of the Iron Tower to—”

“To match her with an appropriate sire for her children? Oh yes. I know the game. I grew up with a mother who loathed the very sight of my father, and he hated her in turn. Odd, isn’t it, that your forced inbreeding has created generations of progressively
less
powerful Obscurists? It’s as if it doesn’t actually work to force people into loveless unions!”

“You know nothing—”

“As one of your more notable failures, I’d say I know
everything,
” Wolfe said flatly. “Go away, Gregory. Morgan stays with us.”

Jess stood up. Didn’t say or do anything; just stood up. Khalila stood, too. Thomas. Santi. Wolfe stood still with deliberate calm.

Dominic at last raised his head, and the relief on his face was very plain.

“This is a foolish waste of our charity,” Gregory said. “We’ve offered
you safety. Refuge. Care for your wounded. And you’re throwing it back in our faces, and for what? You can’t keep her. She belongs to us. To the Tower and the Library.”

“She belongs to no one. Let me be clear: the girl makes her own choices, for as long as she’s with us. If my mother disagrees with that, tell her to come herself. I don’t listen to self-important lackeys.”

Gregory’s face turned an alarming shade of red. “As you wish,” he said. “
Scholar
Wolfe.”

He walked back to his table, anger in every stiff motion, and pointedly turned his back to them. Jess didn’t want to do the same. He didn’t trust Gregory not to stick a knife in it.

Dominic was still there. The young man looked scared as a rabbit, but he stayed long enough to say, to Morgan, “I’m sorry,” before he went back to his own table.

Not everyone in the Iron Tower was as content and smug as Rosa.

“Morgan?” Khalila settled back down in her chair and reached for Morgan’s hand. “They haven’t forced you—”

“Not yet,” Morgan said. “Thank you, Scholar Wolfe.”

He shook his napkin out and dropped it in his lap. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I did it to annoy Gregory.”

“Watch him,” Morgan said. “He’s a snake.”

“I’m immune to his particular poison. We knew each other as children, and he was five years older. You can imagine how that appealed to his cruelty.”

She shuddered. “I’d rather not. And thank you, whatever you meant by it.”

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. And then the food arrived, and Jess was pleasantly surprised to find his roast beef and mash were as good as a Sunday feast at home—one of the few consistently pleasant things he could recall about his childhood. They’d even mushed his peas. For a while, the five of them concentrated on their food. Someone had wisely
allotted Thomas a double portion, and he ate it at an alarming speed that worried Jess for a moment; maybe the young German’s stomach couldn’t handle such a sudden rush of rich food. But Thomas seemed happy, and at the moment that was all that mattered.

“Glain!” Thomas suddenly put down his fork—he was more than halfway done with his second large schnitzel—and looked around at the rest of them. “What is Glain eating? Is she allowed visitors yet?”

“You’re free to ask,” Wolfe said. “The Medica floor is below this one.”

“Soup,” Thomas said. “I’ll take her soup.” Without waiting for anyone else, he stood up and stopped a server, ordered a bowl to go, and quickly left with it. Santi, done with his meal, leaned back to watch him go.

“He’s making a quick recovery,” he said.

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed. He didn’t look happy. “Seems so.”

They exchanged looks—significant ones, Jess thought. “He’s strong,” he said, out of some impulse to defend his friend. Santi sighed.

“He wouldn’t have survived without that,” he said. “But strength won’t keep the darkness away, and being on his own in a hostile place isn’t good for him. Go. Find him.”

Jess didn’t hesitate to take that suggestion. And it led him to the Medica floor.

T
he floor, instead of having individual chambers, had been built open, with only suspended curtains sectioning off one patient from another. Most of the curtains had been tidily drawn back and secured, the beds empty. The Medica attendant on duty rose from her station to study him as he entered, then nodded toward one of the curtained areas. “Your companions are there,” she said. “You can stay a few minutes. No longer. The patient needs rest.”

Jess nodded and continued on, and found Thomas sitting at Glain’s bedside. He seemed fine, and so did Glain; she’d been propped up with cushions, and was trying to spoon up soup, but without much appetite
that Jess could see. He pulled a chair closer and straddled it. “I’ve been told that the Iron Tower gets the best of everything,” he said.

Glain swallowed her mouthful and reached for the water glass. “Soup is soup. But they’ve treated me well enough.” She shot Jess a guarded look. “How is everyone else?”

“All right so far,” he said. He knew she was asking mostly about Morgan, and he didn’t want to answer that question. “So, you’re not going to die on us, then.”

“Don’t you just wish? No. You’re not so lucky, Brightwell.”

“Good.” He extended a hand and she clasped it, but quickly, and then dug back into her soup. Personal emotion always made her uncomfortable. “Thomas thought of the food.”

“It was kind,” Glain said, and gave the German boy a brief, full smile. “Did you eat?”

“Schnitzel,” Thomas said. “But I almost regret it. I— My stomach can’t take so much rich food so quickly, I think.” He’d paled again and his fingers drummed in agitation. Trying, Jess figured, to distract himself from thoughts of what he’d eaten in the cells, or the times he’d had to endure hunger.
Even the good things are tainted for him,
Jess thought, and it enraged him all over again. But it would get better, wouldn’t it? Given time?
It hasn’t for Wolfe.
Against his will, he recalled Elsinore Quest’s advice: damage like this couldn’t be buried safely.

“We should leave you,” Jess said, “unless you need something?”

“I’ll harass the staff if I do. That’s what they’re here for,” Glain replied. “You concentrate on finding a way out of this. I’ll join you tomorrow.”

“If the physicians say you can.”

“Tomorrow,” she said, and ate another mouthful of soup with grim determination.

Thomas seemed reluctant to leave despite his restlessness, and Jess had to convince him that they weren’t abandoning Glain; he seemed eager for her not to feel alone, but to Jess it appeared to be more about Thomas’s
experiences shadowing the situation. Eventually, Glain persuaded him by rolling her eyes and said, “Oh, for the sake of Heron, just leave me to get some rest, Thomas! I’m fine!” And as blunt as it was, it did the job of convincing him to follow Jess out.

As they left, though, Jess caught sight of a familiar figure slipping into another private curtained-off area across the way, and put his hand on Thomas’s arm to hold him back. “Wait here for me,” he said. “I’ll just be a moment.”

“Jess?”

“One moment.”

He didn’t go into the private space, but he pulled the curtain aside, just enough to see Morgan sitting down at the bedside of another young woman. It took him a moment to recall it, but hadn’t the snide girl Rosa mentioned something about Morgan’s friend?
Sybil . . . No. Sybilla.

Sybilla couldn’t have been much older than Rosa—fifteen or sixteen, best guess. She was a slip of a thing, swallowed up by blankets and pillows, wan, pale, and unconscious.

As he watched, Morgan put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, bowed her head, and began to cry. Silent, wrenching tears.

“Sir,” the Medica attendant said sharply from behind him. “Come away. Now.”

Jess jumped and turned and followed her away. “Wait,” he said. “What happened to her? The girl in the bed?”

“I can’t discuss that.”

“Wait.” Jess drew her to a stop and met her eyes. “What happened?”

She looked away all too quickly. “I told you, I can’t discuss it.” But she hadn’t pulled away, either, and after a pause whispered, “She took poison. She’s not the first.”

He kept his voice as low as hers. “Why?”

“Not everyone is happy with their fate,” she said, and then did pull away. “Or suited to it. You should go. Now.”

Jess looked back over his shoulder at the closed curtains. Morgan
must not have heard; he could see her shadow against the cloth, still bent forward. Still lost in her grief and fear.

I won’t let it happen to you,
he told her.
Whatever you feel about me now, that doesn’t matter. I don’t ever want to see you like Sybilla.

H
e walked Thomas back to the safety of the others and waited on the stairs until Morgan walked out onto the landing in front of the Medica doors. She didn’t look up to where he stood; she seemed tired and lonely, and she turned and took the stairs
down
. Away from him. Away from the rest of them.