Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (37 page)

Jess followed quietly and at a distance.

She descended two floors and went down a hallway, and as he stepped through and into sudden, thick darkness, he felt a knife prick the skin of his throat, and he immediately froze.

Then she sighed. “Oh, Jess. Please go away.” Her voice sounded thick and unsteady, and he knew she was still crying or on the verge of it. The knife moved away, and he heard her start to turn.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. That earned another sigh, even more quiet.

“For what?”

“For not understanding. Staying away from this place should always have been your choice. Not mine.” He hesitated for a second. “Your friend. Will she live?”

“Yes,” Morgan said. “And that’s almost worse. You see, they now consider her a danger to herself, so what little freedom she did have left will be taken away. She can’t bear that. Yet she’ll have to somehow.”

“Is he so bad? Her match?”

“No. Iskander is perfectly fine. But Sybilla . . . she was in love with someone else.”

“Who?”

Morgan turned and put her hand on his cheek. The contact was sweet and warm and unexpected, and he resisted the urge to put his arms around her.

And then she said, “Me.”

He couldn’t comprehend that for a moment, and then his stomach lurched and dropped two floors. “You— You and Sybilla?”

“No, Jess, that’s not what I mean at all.” Morgan’s hand dropped away and he felt terribly, icily cold now. He felt her move away. The hallway was starting to reveal itself to him in shadows and highlights of dark gray, and he could see her now, just a shape. A cipher. “She was
kind
to me. She was the only one, at first, and we spent time together. She liked me. I didn’t realize—I didn’t realize at first that she felt more for me than that.” The pain of that was still there in her voice, and he almost winced. “And when I did, I didn’t know what to say, except that I—I couldn’t be with her. I felt awful about it; I think she saw me as . . . as a refuge from Iskander. But it was never . . . I never . . .” This time there was no doubt she was crying; he could hear the agonized hitch of her breath. “Oh God, Jess. I didn’t tell her I was running. I left her here alone. You betrayed me, and I betrayed
her
. I should have at least tried to help her get out of here, too. I knew she was just as desperate!”

He still felt light-headed; his heart was pounding so hard it hurt. “It wasn’t your fault. You felt you had to help us with Thomas. You know that.”

“It was more than that. I was running away from Dominic, too, that night,” she said. “We both try to do the right thing, don’t we? But no matter what we do, it keeps coming out
wrong
.”

He put his arms around her, and after a second of stiffness, she collapsed against him. He kissed her cheek, and she put her arms around his neck and held him tightly. “I love you,” she whispered to him. “I never stopped, Jess—I want you to know that. I just—I just felt so alone here, and the only person I could blame was you.”

She loves me. She still loves me.
That brought him a stunned kind of peace. “Forgive me?”

She kissed him gently on the lips. Sweet and a little sad. “I did already,” she said. “Now go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

H
e was unexpectedly tired, he realized as he headed back to his room, but there was no chance to rest yet. Wolfe’s door was open, and Khalila, Thomas, and Santi were in with him. They all looked up when he passed, and Wolfe said, “Brightwell. In.”

Jess took up a leaning spot on the wall. Wolfe paced, of course, as was his usual habit. Khalila and Thomas sat, quietly watching him. Santi poured Jess a cup of wine, and Jess took a sip before he asked, “So, what’s this?”

“This is us planning what to do,” Santi said. “It’s not going very well. Considering that no matter what we do, there’s very little chance we can break free of this tower, and none at all we will get out of Alexandria alive if we do.”

“Nic.”

“There’s no point in planning when we’re too tired to think,” he said quite reasonably. “Your mother’s not likely to hand us over immediately, is she? Or have us knifed in our beds?”

“No,” Wolfe said. He kept pacing, hands restlessly tugging at his robe. “Hardly her style.”

“In that case, I have some news,” Santi said. “Zara might not be a friend to me any longer, but I do have some in the High Garda I can rely on. I asked them to let me know if anyone matching Dario’s description was captured either in Rome or elsewhere. There have been no arrests. He made it out of Rome safely, I believe.”

Khalila let out a trembling breath and whispered a prayer of thanks.

“Glain’s doing well,” Jess said. “She should be strong enough to join us tomorrow.”

“Or will join us, anyway?” Wolfe asked. “Yes, I know the girl. She won’t stay in that bed long.”

“And Morgan?” Thomas looked at Jess and raised his eyebrows. “She’s all right?”

“Yes. She’s all right. I saw her to her room.”

“Morgan’s in no danger at all here, at least not the kind we’re in,” Wolfe said. “Her problem is more desperate, but less violent. We have a day, two at most, before the Archivist himself arrives at the Tower, and once he does, my mother won’t have a choice but to hand us over. She can turn the Artifex away. Not the head of the Great Library.”

“Then we need to leave,” Thomas said. “Perhaps the Obscurist will send us away to safety?”

“She says she will,” Wolfe said. “I don’t know if I believe her. My mother’s ever been in pursuit of her own agenda. Sentiment doesn’t often enter the equation.”

Like mother, like son,
Jess thought, but had the sense not to say it. “Any other way out of here?” he asked, but he already knew the answer. If there had been, Morgan wouldn’t have been here as long as she had.

“It’s possible,” Khalila said slowly. “I’ve been researching the Iron Tower for months. I was doing it for Morgan, in case I could find any way to get her out safely. Just before we left, I found something strange in the records. Very strange. I took notes, but I didn’t have a chance to verify the research.”

“And?” Wolfe asked, and she blushed a little.

“Just a moment.” She turned, and Jess thought she was retrieving something from a hidden pocket in her dress. Or under it. She handed over a single sheet of paper to Wolfe. “It’s coded. Dario created the cipher for me. Do you need the key?”

Jess gestured for the page, and Wolfe passed it along. Jess blinked. “When did he make the code for you?”

“When? Just a few days ago. He said we’d be better off that way. Why?”

Jess felt himself smiling tightly; how like Dario to do something smart and at the same time demonstrate his arrogance. “Because I recognize it. It’s my family’s code.”

“Don’t tell me Dario’s a long-lost cousin!”

“Just an ass,” Jess said. “He asked me about the code once. I told him it was unbreakable. So of course he broke it. And now he’s using it. Idiot.”

“The contents?” Wolfe prompted impatiently. Santi, who’d said nothing, pushed himself off the wall he’d been holding up to stand next to them.

“There’s a hidden section in the Iron Tower. Several floors unaccounted for in all of the records that exist. What’s above the garden level, where the Translation comes in?”

Wolfe frowned. “Nothing. That’s the top of the Tower.”

“No, that isn’t true,” Thomas said. His eyes turned blank, the way they did as he performed calculations Jess couldn’t even fathom inside his head. “There must be at least four more floors above it. Possibly five.”

“Morgan would have found it by now. She’s had nothing but time to look!”

Jess sent Wolfe a warning look. “If Thomas says it’s there, it’s there. Perhaps we could hide in these hidden floors. Perhaps there’s even an escape of some kind there.”

“Don’t you think if there was a way upstairs, someone else would have found it by now?”

Wolfe hadn’t said anything, but he looked over their heads at Santi, who raised his eyebrows.

“We can try,” he said. “But I have a feeling that anything that’s secret inside the Iron Tower may be a great deal deadlier than it looks.”

J
ess slept poorly, even as tired as he was. All the day’s events kept jumping through his mind, and the knowledge that Morgan was here, within reach, left him feeling restless. When he rose at the first light of dawn the next day, his first thought as he looked out the narrow, unbreakable window was,
This is the last time I’ll see Alexandria.
One way or another, they’d either leave this place for good or die here.

Not surprising to him that Wolfe and Santi were already up and dressed. Wolfe still wore a Scholar’s robe over his plain shirt and trousers. Santi had put on his uniform. Khalila emerged just a few minutes after, fresh and lovely in a dark blue dress and head scarf.

She smiled at Jess. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “You?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t seen Thomas yet. Maybe he’s the late riser among us.”

But he wasn’t. Glain was true to her word and appeared just a moment later, with Thomas walking at her side as she climbed the stairs. They were talking with an ease and animation that seemed vaguely surprising to Jess, given their circumstances.

And then Morgan. She’d changed into a practical costume: trousers and a gray jacket. Against the plain fabric, her gold collar seemed far too bright. She’d pulled her brown hair back in a twist. All business.

“The Artifex came to the gates just before dawn,” she said. “I saw him arrive with soldiers. The Obscurist ordered him to leave. Very tense. I’m surprised there wasn’t a fight.”

“There will be,” Santi said. “Soon. He’s not going to take no for an answer.”

“He won’t have to,” Wolfe said. “He’ll send for the Archivist, and that’s an end to it. And us.” He nodded to Khalila. “We’ll need to explore Khalila’s information. Quickly.”

“About that,” Santi said. “Wathen. How do you judge your ability to run today?”

Quick on the uptake, Glain. Her dark eyes flashed around at each of them, and she raised her chin and said, “Whatever the day requires, sir.”

Santi nodded. “Packs and weapons. Our time’s running out. Either we find a way out this morning or we fight.”

And our odds aren’t good, either way,
Jess thought. He reached out for Morgan’s hand and her fingertips felt chilled in his. She knew, too. She had to know. This idea of Khalila’s might be a useless effort, but it was all they had left.

“Where are you going?” Morgan asked, and Jess explained it as quickly as he could. She caught on immediately. “Of course. There was something that always bothered me. The Obscurist would lock the garden
entrance every few days. I thought she was conducting secret work via Translation. I didn’t think it could be anything else.”

“You’ve never heard of any hidden floors above it?”

“No,” she said. “Never. Not even a rumor.”

“Maybe they don’t actually exist,” Thomas said.

“Then we’ll have a nice garden stroll before we’re taken out to be killed,” Santi said. “I don’t see any drawbacks.”

They took the strange moving room—it was, Jess learned, called a lift, which made quite a bit of sense, given its function—up to the garden floor, a floor that, he realized, could only be accessed by Morgan’s hand resting on the panel, while other choices were clearly visible with switches. “Not everyone is allowed use of the garden,” she told them. “Only the most senior in the Tower.”

“And you’re one of them?” Wolfe gave her a look that said he clearly doubted that, and, of course, he was right.

“No,” she said. “I changed the script inside the elevator months ago. It thinks I’m Gregory. So far, none of them have figured that out, though they’ve found other changes I made. I suppose this is the last time I’ll be able to use this one, too.”

“With any luck, it’s the last time you’ll need to,” Jess said. “Can you use the Translation Chamber?”

But Morgan shook her head this time. “Not after I used it to escape last time. They’ll have made sure to lock it off from me this time. But I’ll check, just to be sure.”

When the lift slid to a stop and the doors opened, they stepped out into the lush, warm garden. It was deserted except for the flutters of butterflies among the flowers and a subtle hum of bees that drowsily roamed the room near a hive at the far end. The Translation couch and helmet occupied the central gazebo of the room, but outside morning stretched toward noon beneath a bleached-pale sky, and the dizzy patchwork of Alexandria heaved with motion in the streets.