Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (29 page)

Then Santi opened the bottle and poured the thick greenish contents over the stack of books. They flared up into a brilliant pyre, and Jess
pulled Thomas and Morgan back from the billowing toxic smoke.
We’re Burners,
Jess thought, stricken.
Now we’re Burners.

Through the hanging pall of smoke, as he started to cough, he saw Santi take out two more bottles and pour them over the Gorgon face of the metal plate. This time it didn’t burn; it bubbled as it distorted the Gorgon’s snarl into a slack-mouthed scream, and then hissed and melted it away altogether. The plate was thick, but the chemicals would do the job . . . if they had time.

Jess heard sounds from the hallway. He moved toward the opening, and what started as distant running footsteps rapidly came closer. They were still in the other corridor, fast approaching the sharp corner. He exchanged a look with Glain, and without a word spoken, they moved to take up positions. He was, by common consent, the better shot, and before anyone appeared at the intersection, let loose a short burst of lethal projectile fire that chewed head-high holes in the old stonework. An explicit warning to the troops around the corner. In the next second, before the echoes died, he switched the weapon back to a stun setting—enough to put someone down, he hoped, if he scored a good shot. From his angle, he’d get the first pick of targets, and Glain would clean up.

The first man to the corner was Blue Squad leader Rollison. Troll threw himself into the opening with fearless disregard for his own safety, maybe hoping that Jess would hesitate to fire, but Jess didn’t: he planted his shot precisely on target, into the armor just above Troll’s stomach. It would, he vividly remembered, knock the wind right out of a man.

Troll dropped like a suit of empty clothes, mouth open as he gagged for air. Glain got the next soldier to appear, Jess the third. The rest hesitated and dragged their injured comrades back to cover.

“We’re through,” Santi said from behind them. “Glain, get down to the next level. Go.
Now.
”

“I’d rather hold this position, sir.”

“I need you to be sure our escape route’s secure. Take Wolfe with you and don’t let him resist.”

Before either of them could protest, Santi walked right past them into the opening. Into the hallway. Glain hesitated, then—as she would, being Glain—followed orders, grabbing Wolfe and pushing him toward the open dark hole in the floor.

Jess took in a deep breath and focused on Santi, who was putting his own life on the line to buy time. He raised his weapon to provide what cover he could, though if anyone on the other end decided to rain fire, Santi wouldn’t survive.

Captain Santi strode halfway down the hall and called out, “Zara?”

There was a short silence, and then Santi’s lieutenant—the green-eyed woman—stepped around to face him, with her gun pointed squarely at his chest. “Sir,” she said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You know what I’m doing. You saw the cells. Don’t tell me you agree with what they do here. What
we
do here. The Library is us. We allow this to happen, Zara.”

“Whether I agree with it or not, I can’t let you take prisoners out of custody! There are ways we can make protests. Channels for—”

“Do you really think that the people who made this place care about protests or channels or laws? Come here and look, Zara.
Look at what they do.
”

The woman didn’t answer. She stared at Santi for a long moment, and Jess couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Not at all.

Then she said, “Nic, please. Don’t make me do this. We can make a story that you were forced into helping them. I don’t know, but we’ll make something work. You can’t throw away your career. Your
life
! I know this is—it looks bad. But it can be fixed. It
will
be fixed!”

“It won’t,” he told her. “I’m sorry. They’d never believe I didn’t know what I was doing. And I did know. I went into this knowing full well how it would go.” Santi’s voice was gentle but firm. “Zara, I’m not asking you to join me. I’m just asking you to come with me and look. If you don’t agree once you’ve seen what is in this room, then shoot.”

She blinked slowly, looking at him, then at the troops surely queued up
behind her, just around the corner. “I’m going with him,” she said. “Give me one minute. If I don’t return, shoot to kill. Is that understood? They may be wearing Scholar’s robes, but they are traitors to the Library. No mercy.”

“Sir.” The echoing voices sounded dark and sure. Wolfe and Glain were already gone, as was Morgan. Dario and Khalila were helping Thomas through the opening and struggling with his weight. He dropped out of sight. Dario quickly gestured at Khalila to follow, and she let him take her hands and lower her down. With one last glance at Jess—
Almost an apology,
Jess thought—Dario jumped through and disappeared.

Santi walked his lieutenant down the hall toward Jess. “I don’t want to fight my own people,” he said. “No more than you want to fight me.”

“Why are you doing this? Just tell me that.”

“Just look.”

Santi walked her into the round room filled with machines—machines built to cut, to tear, to pull, to cause suffering and anguish. There was no other use for them. The stained walls and floor told the story without any words. The smell of pain and blood and despair was louder than screams.

Zara stopped in her tracks. She stared at the room, the gruesome equipment, the floor . . . and then back at Santi. She started to speak, then shook her head.

“Christopher was here,” Santi said. “He was
here
. Do you understand now?
This
is what they don’t tell us.
This
is who we serve. Who those people have made us.”

“No. It’s not—” She took in a trembling breath. “Someone has to keep order,” she said. “Our hands aren’t clean, either.”

“The High Garda fights wars; we don’t torture the innocent
or
the guilty. This is what they made us into. I’m asking you to say you arrived too late to stop us, Zara. That’s all I’m asking.”

The woman stood very still, looking at the room, hearing the silent screams trapped here, and Jess saw tears glitter in her eyes.

Then she lifted her gun and trained it directly on Captain Santi. From where Jess stood, he couldn’t tell if she had set it for lethal force or
stun, but the look in her eyes said she meant to kill. “Surrender now, and maybe the Archivist will show you mercy.”

“Mercy?” Santi’s voice was as dark as the dried blood on the walls. “Look around. Does it appear to you the Library has an abundance of that? Shoot me. You’ll have to, to stop me.”

She would, Jess realized. She wasn’t like Santi. Like Jess.

She couldn’t admit her world was a lie and everything she’d done had been in the service of something dark.

Jess fired, but he was too late. She fired at exactly the same moment his bullet hit her armor.

Zara and Santi fell at the same time.

Text of a letter from Pharaoh Ptolemy II to the Archivist Callimachus, in the time of his reign, long may his name be known

From the scribe of Pharaoh Ptolemy
II
, to his most excellent servant Callimachus, Archivist of the Great Library, in the twelfth year of his glorious reign:

Great King Ptolemy, Light of Egypt, has wishes to endow you with his great wisdom on the subject of the loyalty of the Great Library, this sacred endeavor, to the throne of Egypt, as has been blessed by the gods from the first rays of dawn on the eternal Nile.

It is his wisdom that always must the Library exist to cast glory upon Egypt and the pharaoh, and any thought that the Library shall be a power unto itself is a dangerous and heretical whisper that must be crushed out.

Knowledge is not a pure goal. All that you gather together shall lift the pharaoh, sacred be his duty to the gods and the people of Egypt.

So speaks he, in his great and divine wisdom.

A notation to this document from Archivist Callimachus, sent to the Scholars of the Great Library

A great decision is now upon us. Will we be nothing but a mirror for Pharaoh to gaze into, to see himself as beautiful and powerful? Or do we follow our truest calling, that of benefit for all who seek to learn, and gather up this knowledge in the name of the seekers, the scholars, the teachers, the students? Is what we do nothing but a prop for a king, or is it a lever by which we move the world?

It falls to us to decide this. It will be difficult. It will be dangerous. Pharaoh has power and strength, and if we declare ourselves independent from his power, we must defend that independence with our blood. More, we must seek that same hard course of independence from every kingdom, every philosophy, every religion that would take us as its own prop, its own polished mirror in which to gaze.

I say, let us throw the bones and see what fortune brings us. Knowledge is power, so they say.

If so, then we have more than any king.

H
e’s dead,
Jess thought, and felt a wave of sick horror.
My fault.
She’d been aiming for a killing shot, and he should have been, too. He’d tried to save her, and she’d killed Captain Santi . . .

And then Santi pulled in a long, ragged breath. He gasped for air as the flexible armor in the center of his chest smoked, damaged by the shot. But it was over the plate. It had protected him.

She must have chosen her target as carefully as Jess had.

Zara still breathed, but his own shot had knocked her completely unconscious. Wouldn’t last long. They’d have to move fast; the clock was ticking down for her soldiers as well.

Jess grabbed Santi’s arm and dragged him to the hole, yelled, “Catch him,” and slid the captain through feetfirst. Then he gritted his teeth, got on the other side of the torture device that had been blocking the hole, and shoved with all his might. It grated a few inches—enough to disguise the opening, at least for a few moments. There was just enough of a gap left for him to skin through, if he didn’t mind the scrapes.

Jess sucked in his breath and wriggled down just as he heard the other soldiers yelling for the lieutenant. He landed hard—no one caught him—and rolled right into the metal bulk of the lion still blocking the tunnel.

It was still stopped, thank all the old and new gods.

Dario yanked him to his feet. “Move!” Dario said, and squeezed by
the frozen automaton lion. Just beyond, Glain and Wolfe were holding Santi upright and Khalila was helping Thomas, nearly buckling under his weight. Jess hurried over to help. Glain had used one of the portable lights from her pack and they all glowed an unearthly yellow-green. In that light, Thomas looked like a corpse newly risen from the grave.

Santi looked almost as bad, but he was moving on his own, clumsily.

“You were supposed to watch out for him,” Wolfe said to Jess with a poisonously angry glare.

“I did,” he snapped back. “Come on. This way. Thomas, can you make it?”

“I will have to,” Thomas said. “Did you shoot someone?”

“Yes.”

“Was that in the plan?”

“No.”

“We’re well off the plan now,” Glain said. “And we’ve got no map to guide us.”

She didn’t mean the path; that was distinct. Jess’s markers were still clearly visible. She meant the soldiers on their trail, and the hue and cry that was sure to run faster than they could. Zara would wake up soon, and if they hadn’t already discovered their way out, she’d tell them where to look.

“We need a diversion,” Jess said.

“We need an army,” Glain corrected. “And last I looked, we’re about a hundred short of even a small one.”

“Shut up and run,” Dario told her as he replaced Glain on Santi’s left side. “You haven’t changed at all. Still a gloomy girl with a bitter disposition. Cheer up—we’re together again!”

If he hadn’t been wearing Scholar’s robes, she probably would have flattened him for that, but Glain settled for a scorching look and took the lead at an easy, long-legged lope. Jess broke out his light and took more and more of Thomas’s weight, especially as the tunnel began to incline upward—strong he might be, but the German had been chained
in place for too long. As they approached the upper exit of the tunnel and the grate, Jess boosted Glain up, then Thomas. Thomas helped pull up Khalila, Morgan, and Dario, and Wolfe and Santi came last. Jess grabbed Glain’s hold to avoid Wolfe, who still looked at him with blank anger, and climbed quickly up.

They all crouched in the shadows beneath Jupiter’s robes. The Forum beyond was busy, which was a gift; Jess sent a silent prayer up to his Christian god, who must have called in a favor or two for this small miracle in a land loyal to other deities. The Library hadn’t sent the word out yet to clear the Forum.

“How far behind us are they, sir?” Glain asked Santi. He was still breathing raggedly and favoring his side, but he seemed better. Functional, at least.

He was checking over his weapon, and didn’t look up as he replied, “Fifteen minutes until they’re in the tunnels, if we’re lucky, and I wouldn’t count on luck.”

“We have to get back to the Translation Chamber in the basilica,” Morgan said. “It’s our only way out. It’s how we planned to leave!”

“The devil of battle is that plans change,” Santi said. “And if we go that way, we’ll have to go to ground somewhere and let the beehive settle before we try anything. Either that or risk the public exits.”

“They’ll be waiting at every one,” Wolfe said. “Rome isn’t an easy city to enter or leave. They can make sure we don’t slip away. Morgan’s right: Translation is our only way out.”

“Then we use the High Garda chamber, where I arrived.”

“Nic. It’ll be guarded and on high alert, and you know it. We must go back into the basilica.”

“I’d far rather deal with High Garda than a pack of automaton lions hunting just for us, with orders to rip us apart.”

“I’d rather not die,” Dario said flatly. “So perhaps we should think on it.”

“If the problem is with the automata . . .” Thomas’s voice came quietly,
tentatively, and they all hushed to look at him. He almost seemed to flinch from the sudden attention and looked away. “If that’s what you need to fight, I might have a way. There’s an inventor in Rome, Glaudino. I visited his store on Via Baccina a time or two when I was younger. We should go there.”

“Do you think you can trust him?” Wolfe asked, and Thomas shook his head.

“No, of course not,” he said. “He’s very loyal to the Library. He’d never help us.”

“Then I don’t see how this helps—”

“Because he works with the lions,” Thomas said. “I’ll need Morgan with me. And Jess.”

“Why?” Santi demanded. He caught and held his gaze, and Jess saw a visible tremor run through his friend. Santi must have seen it, too, because he paused and softened his tone. “I’m sorry, Schreiber. We’re all on edge. What will you do there to help us?”

“I can make one work for us.”

“One what?”

It was Morgan who answered for Thomas. She’d gotten it far quicker than Jess. “An automaton lion,” she said. “Oh, Thomas, brilliant. Brilliant. Do you think we can do it?”

“Glaudino’s workshop repairs the Library’s automata,” Thomas said. “We should be able to fix one and make it work for us instead.”

Santi’s mind gears were turning again—Jess could see that—and he waited while the captain reconfigured plans, calculated odds, came up with an answer. “How long would you need?” Santi asked.

“I don’t know. A few hours,” Thomas said. “Not much more. The workshop won’t be guarded, I think.”

You think
. Jess didn’t voice his doubts
.
It was still a good chance, and he knew Santi thought so, too. Glain looked more grim about it, but, then, she usually did.

“We’re too noticeable as a group,” Dario said.

“I do need Morgan,” Thomas said. “It takes an Obscurist to do some of this. And I’ll need Jess.”

“Fine. Brightwell and Hault, go find the workshop; Glain, go with them. Wolfe and I will take Seif and Santiago with us. We’ll meet you there on Via Baccina as soon as we can.”

It seemed equitable, and it separated the ones most hunted—Thomas and, conceivably, Morgan—from the rest, and Jess and Glain provided trained protection, even if Jess didn’t exactly feel his best. Jess nodded and helped Thomas up. “Morgan, you come with me. We have to scout and see where they’ve sent the lions out in the Forum.”

She nodded and gave Thomas a quick hug before going with Jess to peek under Jupiter’s robes. They had to get on hands and knees to crawl under, and as Jess helped her up, he spotted a High Garda soldier walking toward them. On impulse, he turned to her and said, “Run.”

It wasn’t a good plan, and she had a much better one. She melted against him, kissed him, and he entirely forgot what he’d been about to say, because the feel of her, the taste, the rich and wonderful
reality
of Morgan pressed against him drove any thought of imminent danger away, just for a few critical seconds.

By the time he pushed her back, the soldier had passed them by, shaking his head. Why wouldn’t he? Just another boy kissing a girl.

“Don’t do that again,” he told her, but he was still pressed against her, mouth hovering too close. It felt like the world had tilted under his boots to keep him there. “This is dangerous work, you know.”

“I know,” she said, and her eyes burned into his with real intensity. “Go buy me a scarf. Hurry.”

“A what?”

“A scarf. I need to cover my face.”

He realized that she was right, and hurried off to the nearest stall. It was floating with colorful silken ribbons fluttering on the breeze. He caught one that he thought would bring out her eyes, passed over
geneih
, and then spotted hats. He bought three of them.

“Thanks,” she said, as he handed her scarf and hat, and wound the silk high enough to conceal part of her face. “Get Thomas.”

Jess bent down to motion for Thomas to come forward. He scrambled out, clumsy and breathless. Someone—Wolfe, Jess realized—had given him a black Scholar’s robe. It was too short on him, but voluminous enough to hide his prison-eroded clothing. Jess clapped a hat on Thomas. It looked a little ridiculous, but that was the point: it hid his matted blond hair and cast so much shade, it was hard to make out his features. Many tourists here wore sun hats. He put his on as well.

Glain came last and fell into step with Jess. They looked for all the world like two guards escorting a visiting Scholar and his companion on a pleasant day out in Rome. They were halfway across the Forum when Jess said, “Do any of us have an idea which way we’re going?” He was eyeing the Library’s lions, which were restlessly, aggressively patrolling the Basilica Julia. So far, they’d not been sent out hunting. They needed to be away from the Forum before that happened.

“This way,” Glain said. “Lucky for you, I study maps of a city I’m being sent to defend instead of napping in the transport.”

She led them quickly and calmly out of the Forum and to the Via Baccina, while Morgan walked arm in arm with Thomas, subtly supporting him when he faltered. There were no lions following yet, but Jess imagined they’d be fanning out through the Forum now, searching for the fugitives. Every High Garda soldier in the city and every local Roman Garda would be alerted soon, if they hadn’t been already.

Behind them, distant screams. The lions had been loosed, and when Jess looked back, he saw crowds of people moving fast away from the direction of the Forum. Panic would be spreading quickly.

“Do you think they got out?” Morgan asked.

Thomas patted her hand gently. “With Santi and Wolfe leading? They got out. Don’t worry.” He was panting, Jess saw. Not much energy left. He hoped this workshop Thomas had mentioned was close.

“What’s waiting for us at the workshop?” Glain asked Thomas as
they walked up the next hill, away from the chaos of the Forum. Thomas slowed with every step as they made the climb, and crowds were thinner here. They’d be more easily noticed by anyone trained to look. “Don’t tell me
wait and see
, or I’ll forget I’m your friend, Thomas Schreiber.”

“I’m your friend, even if you forget that, too,” Thomas said. “I won’t lead you into too much danger, and I won’t keep you in the dark. Signor Glaudino’s workshop is the primary repair shop for the automata of Rome.”

“Wait,” she said, and turned to face him, still walking backward. “Are you telling me you’re dragging us into a shop
full of lions
?”

“I don’t know if they’re
all
lions,” he said. “Most, probably. There are a few made in the shape of Roman gods, and, of course—”

“Are they working?”

“Oh, some of them will be, since Glaudino will have fixed them.”

“We can’t fight automata, Thomas!”

“We won’t have to,” Thomas said. “They’ll be switched off. How else would Signor Glaudino even begin work on them? Jess, you and Glain have to take the master and his apprentices and lock them away, and give Morgan and me time to repair and change one. Do you think you can do that?”

“We can do our jobs,” Glain said. Then she sent Jess a look, and he knew exactly what it meant.

Is he really capable of doing anything after spending all that time in a cell?

Jess lifted one shoulder in a very small, almost invisible shrug.

Because they had no real choice.