Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (9 page)

Not to mention the fact that there were
many
kinds of automata: sphinxes, lions, the Spartan that watched Jess balefully in the courtyard. Surely different models had different locations for such an override.
Morgan might be of some help,
he thought, but he had to wait until she contacted
him
; there was no way he could write directly to
her
. Frustrating.

What would Thomas do?
Jess closed his eyes and imagined the automaton that was most common to Alexandria: the sphinx. From pharaoh’s head to lion’s tail, it was a fearsomely intimidating creature the size of an actual lion, and armed with the claws and power of one, too. He’d never seen one with an open mouth; did they have lion’s fangs, too? Or human teeth? Somehow, imagining them with an open mouth and human teeth to bite with made them more frightening.
Where would Thomas put an off switch?

Thomas had never built automata like the Library’s versions—his had been toys, dolls, chess sets—but one thing he’d said seemed significant now.
You never put the activation button on top,
Thomas had said when he was constructing a miniature horse.
You see? Anywhere it could be accidentally pressed would be bad design. It must go underneath.

Underneath. But what engineer in his right mind would want to slither underneath a sphinx to turn it off?
Has to be somewhere the average-sized person can reach,
Jess thought. He was imagining the sphinx so vividly now, he could see its blank eyes staring straight into his own. A pharaoh’s stiff headdress. A human face with a nose and mouth. A chin. A neck flowing down into the broad, muscular body of a lion.

Does that mouth open? Would Thomas have put a switch inside?
Not if there was a risk the jaws might close,
Jess thought. The idea was efficiency and safety.

He just didn’t know, and he thought, with a tired shudder, that Anit’s brothers had likely done this same mental exercise and gotten it wrong. When it had come to their final test, they’d lost their lives. No wonder Red Ibrahim didn’t use this information. He’d sacrificed enough to it.
And Anit gave it to me to let me try, at a considerable profit.
Clever girl. No risk to her family, and if Jess managed where her own brothers had failed, she’d probably buy that information back from him.

Jess tucked the book and translation back into his smuggling harness, curled up, and fell asleep for a blissfully quiet night. His dreams, though, were not so restful, full of blood, fire, death, Thomas’s screams as Jess ran down an endless tunnel toward him, never quite arriving.

He woke up with the bitter taste of ashes coating his tongue, and realized it was well before dawn.
Good,
he thought. He’d told Glain, Wolfe, and Santi what he knew about Thomas. There were others who needed to know, too.

And he needed the feeling of motion, even if it was only an illusion of progress.

B
reakfast came from a sleepy street vendor with a tray full of warm almond pastries, and he ate one on the long walk down gently sloping streets to the harbor. Alexandria was a breathtakingly beautiful city, and no matter how long he’d been here, it never failed to grab his attention. This morning, ships floated in shadow, while the tallest point of the pyramid of the Serapeum flared with the brilliant glow of sunrise. It was promising to be a clear morning, and the sea looked as calm as milk.

A long, straight road ran to the far end across the bay to the island of Pharos, and there, covering a huge part of that island, stretched the massive Lighthouse of Alexandria. It was shaped like a graduated stack of three square buildings, one atop another, tapering to a graceful tower in the upper third of its height. It sparked golden at the tallest point, where a statue of Hathor lifted her hands to the sun, and the dawn’s color shaded down the tower from soft orange into twilight blue at the base. Even at this early hour, figures moved in the large, open courtyard in flowing robes: no doubt they were Scholars and attendants, heading to their work. There were four main entrances, one on each side of the square—open, but with automaton sphinxes standing guard.

He had no particular reason to think the sphinxes would attack, but he also didn’t want a record of his visit here, in case someone was watching his movements. No one doubted he was High Garda, after all; he wore the bracelet of service, prominently visible on one wrist, and a crisp, official uniform. He wasn’t
actually
sneaking in or evading security. Merely . . . blending.

All it really took was a stack of five pastry boxes high enough to conceal his face, and to wait for a group of uniformed High Garda soldiers to arrive for duty. He fell in with them and kept his walk and posture as relaxed as he could.

The sphinxes turned their heads to track him, but with his face blocked by the boxes, they quickly lost interest and began scanning the rest of the incoming rush of Scholars, guards, and assistants. The automata were trained to detect Greek fire and the delicate scent of original books, but the pastries would have more than covered any hint that escaped the smuggling harness’s pouch.

The pastries smelled delicious enough to make his stomach rumble again.

Jess paused in the courtyard to get his bearings. It was still night-shaded inside the thirty-foot walls that served as defense both from sea and enemies, though some glowing lamps hung in alcoves. The outer edges were furnished with long marble benches and expertly maintained little contemplation gardens, each overseen by a god statue with some connection to scholarship. There, in the far corner, Athena lifted her spear with her familiar owl on her shoulder. Saraswati had her own quiet garden, where her statue sat with lute in hand by a little fountain. Nabu of Babylon and Thoth of Egypt presided over their own groves, each a patron of the written arts. The Lighthouse courtyard had the feel of something incredibly ancient, and, at the same time, something vital and alive, walked and enjoyed by thousands every day. Antique and modern together.

The Lighthouse rose in a stacked spire toward the heavens. It had looked large at a distance, but it was truly massive—and, more than most
things he’d seen in Alexandria, it had the look of ancient wear. It had been rubbed by so many hands and shoulders that the corners at the base to the height of his head were almost rounded away. The stone steps leading inside dipped in the center, the mark of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of feet.

Jess began the long trip up the winding stairs. There was a steam-powered lifting device in the center, but it seemed slow and crowded, and he didn’t altogether trust mechanical things today. By the time he reached the twenty-second floor, he was only a little out of breath. Brutal as it might be, the High Garda’s conditioning certainly worked.

He rapped on the closed door, balancing the boxes in one hand, and heard a muffled voice invite him to enter. He stepped in, closed the door, and put the stack of pastry boxes on the desk, careful to avoid any of the loose pages littering the top.

Then he looked up into the wide, startled eyes of Scholar Khalila Seif.

She was just as he remembered, as if the months had never passed: pretty, composed, modestly dressed in a loose floral-patterned dress beneath her sweeping Scholar’s robe. Her pale pink hijab lay neat and perfect and framed her face to accentuate her large brown eyes.

After that shocked, frozen stare, Khalila let out a girlish squeal and launched herself around the desk and into his arms, hugging him with a ferocity that was surprising for a girl her size. “Jess! It’s so good to see you! What are you doing here?”

“Bringing breakfast,” he said, and gestured to the tower of pastry. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“Did you think they starve me? Or are you expecting a famine?” She swatted at him with a small, elegant hand and pushed him toward a pair of chairs near the windows. Her view was of the city of Alexandria, and it was spectacular. Seabirds glided at eye level, while the streets and buildings climbed up the hill around the harbor. The giant structure of the Alexandrian Serapeum dominated the sky, along with the black, rounded gloom of the Iron Tower. She ignored the sights. Her smile was full of
delight, and she leaned forward toward him with her hands clasped together in her lap. “Whatever are you doing? Really?”

“I wanted to see you,” he said. It was true and it was untrue at the same time. Khalila was a friend. A brilliant mind. A rising star of the Library. When they’d all been together in Wolfe’s class, she’d been as much a part of the team as any of them, and more than some, but now . . . now she was fast-tracked to the highest levels of scholarship. One day, she’d rise to greatness. Power. Maybe even fill the chair of the Archivist.

If he didn’t get her killed.
I shouldn’t do this,
he thought.
I’ll ruin everything for her. Everything.

But he knew Khalila well enough to know that she’d find out, and when she did, she wouldn’t thank him for that protection.

Jess slowly reached over and took one of her hands in his, and said, in a very low voice, “Is it safe to talk here?”

“Yes,” she said at the same quiet level. “They don’t monitor my conversations. Still, we should be careful. And fond of you as I am, you should not stay here long.”

“I know,” Jess said. “I’ll be brief.” There was, he realized, no easy way to tell her; the shock wouldn’t be kind. Better to do it in one go. “I have proof that Thomas wasn’t executed, as the Archivist told us he was. There’s every reason to believe Thomas is still alive, in prison.”

Khalila’s smile faltered, then died, and her dark eyes fixed on his for so long and so silently that he wondered if she’d really heard him. Then she stood up; walked to the door with brisk, firm steps; and turned the lock. “That will put on a privacy signal. My assistant could arrive at any moment,” she told him. “I shouldn’t wish for her to hear this.” Her voice sounded completely normal, as if he’d told her that there might be rain in the afternoon, or that the price of saffron could go up in the markets. “I would ask how
you
are taking this, but I think I can guess.”

“You seem very calm,” Jess said.

Khalila turned to face him. Tears glittered in her eyes, on the verge of falling. “Do I? Who told you he might be alive?”

“No one,” Jess said, and told her a shortened story about the illegal book and his confession to Wolfe, Santi, and Glain. “Santi’s worried we’ll all do something stupid now. To be fair, he’s probably right about that.”

She crossed back to her chair and sat, then absently dabbed at the corners of her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. A few blinks, and the tears vanished, leaving a hard, luminous shine. “And you believe this? You’re sure?”

She was asking him to be logical, not emotional. Jess took a moment to order his thoughts. “Devil’s advocate? It’s exactly the kind of ruse the Archivist would love to try,” he admitted. “And maybe he’d be careful enough to make me work for months to lay hands on this information. So I’m not completely sure, not yet. We might never be completely sure. Maybe we’ll have to take a chance.”

“You
must
be sure,” she told him. “If it’s a trap . . .”

She wasn’t saying how much she’d lose for it, but he was acutely aware. “We need to find records of where the Library likes to keep its most dangerous prisoners,” he said. “I’m just not sure how to get to them—and that’s where you come in, I think. You’re the best researcher I know, Khalila.”

“Without a doubt.” She had the sweetest smile, one that dimpled just at the corner to let him know she was silently mocking him. “And you want me to proceed?”

“Carefully. Khalila, I mean it:
carefully.
”

“Of course. I understand the risks.” She paused for a moment, then came to sit next to him again, hands folded in her lap. “Jess—having been here in the Lighthouse for the past few months, I have heard . . . disturbing things about Scholar Wolfe. That he may not be himself, or—”

“A few books short of a full library?” Jess finished, and was rewarded with a nod. “It’s true: he went through terrible things before we met him, and they left scars. But I don’t think he’s broken beyond repair, and I think we can count on him. All this makes sense. Thomas had—has—too good a mind for the Library to just discard. They’ll want to
use
him. Isn’t that logical?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Or it’s just difficult for us to believe the arrogance that would destroy such a beautiful mind. Such a . . . such a beautiful person as Thomas.” That thought killed another of her lovely smiles, and Jess hurt to see it.

“We have two choices,” he said. “We can choose to believe he’s dead or choose to believe he’s alive. Believing he’s dead is safer, but—”

“But so cruel,” she whispered. “What if he’s alive? Suffering? Thinking we will come for him, and we never do?”

Jess nodded. It never left his mind for long, the idea that somewhere, Thomas Schreiber was counting on him for rescue. “That’s why I can’t let this go, Khalila, trap or no trap. I just can’t. I won’t ask you to do anything more than a little research—”