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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: Great Library
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Held prisoner by the Burner forces in Philadelphia, Jess and his friends struggle to stay alive in the face of threats from both sides ... but a stunning escape guarantees worse is coming. The Library now means to stop them by any means necessary, and they'll have to make dangerous allies and difficult choices to stay alive. They have only two choices: face the might of the Great Library head on, or be erased from life, and the history of the world, for ever. Win or die.
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Seitenzahl: 521
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ASH AND QUILL
VOLUME THREE OF THE GREAT LIBRARY
RACHEL CAINE
To all those who face change without fear. Go forward.
To the ever-transforming glory of the public library, without which we would all be diminished. No one with a book is ever alone, even in the darkest moments.
We are all book lovers. And we all chase the Great Library of Alexandria, one book at a time.
CONTENTS
EPHEMERA
Text of a letter from the Archivist Magister, head of the Great Library of Alexandria, to the commander of the High Garda of the Great Library. Not indexed in the Codex. Restricted viewing.
The Welsh army has broken treaty with the Library and shamelessly looted the valuable books located in our daughter library in London. St Paul’s Serapeum was a monument and sacred space of knowledge for hundreds of years, and now they claim it for their own.
We excused the destruction of our Oxford Serapeum as an accident of war. But this? This is too much. The Welsh king has gone too far and must be shown his mistake.
The king of Wales and England must make immediate reparation for our losses or face the consequences. There are stirrings of rebellion against us on every front, and we must contain and control kingdoms and countries that refuse our authority.
I will allow no further disobedience, whether that comes from foreign kings or our own Scholars.
The penalty for traitors is death.
Handwritten addendum to the Artifex Magnus by the Archivist.
I care little for provincial kingdoms and their spats, but London is the last place our troubling band of Scholar-traitors was spotted … and near St Paul’s, too. I know the Welsh have no love for us, but under threat of total war with the High Garda, they’ll hand them over. If they’re still alive.
Handwritten reply from the Artifex Magnus.
They were seen inside St Paul’s by one of the last librarians to flee, so we know that they were, at least, alive then. Whether they escaped in the confusion or are in a mass grave dug by the Welsh remains to be seen. I wouldn’t assume them dead. Christopher Wolfe should have been dead years ago, and none of us have managed to put him in the ground yet.
In regard to your earlier request, I must regretfully recommend that Gregory be appointed to the position of Obscurist Magnus. I know he’s a vile creature, but the only other candidate is Eskander. I had him dragged out of his self-imposed prison to be shown to me, so I could ensure, on your behalf, that he’s still alive and well. Still a lot of fight left in him, no doubt about that, but as he swore so long ago, he’s saying nothing. Not a word. He decided decades ago to make himself uselessto us, and I think he’s succeeded all too well. Don’t pin your hopes on him.
He did write a note for you. I took the liberty of reading it, and I’ll just say that he’d like you dead. I suppose he blames you for Keria Morning’s death, the way his son does. I suppose neither of them is particularly wrong, come to that.
Don’t worry about your rogue Scholars. We’ve put a high price on their heads. Their own families will be tempted to sell them soon enough.
EPHEMERA
Text of a paper letter from the Burner leader of London to Willinger Beck, head of the Burner city of Philadelphia. Destroyed upon receipt.
I send you a gift out of the ashes of London: four full Scholars of the Library, a gloriously decorated High Garda captain and two of his soldiers, and … best of all … an Obscurist! Not a half-wild hedge witch, but a real, Iron-Tower-trained Obscurist with power even I’ve never seen.
Not only that; they come bearing their own gifts. It’s said that the Scholars have some secret that might well destroy the Great Library’s power for ever. I suppose it’s up to you to find a way to coax that out of them.
Strength and courage, my brother.
CHAPTER ONE
Books burnt so easily.
Paper tanned in the fluttering heat, then sparked sullen red at the edges. Flames left fragile curls of ash. Leather bindings smoked and shrivelled and blackened, just like burning flesh.
Jess Brightwell watched the fire climb the pyramid of books and willed himself not to flinch as each layer caught. His brain raced with involuntary calculations. One hundred books in five layers. The burning bottom layer: forty-four gone. The second level held another thirty-two, and it was already billowing dull smoke. The next had eighteen more volumes, then five on top of that. The pyramid was capped by one lone book that sat tantalisingly ready for the grabbing. Easy to save as the flames climbed the stack, consuming layer after layer and burning something inside him blacker and colder.
If I could just save one …
But he couldn’t save anything. Even himself, at the moment.
Jess’s head hurt fiercely in the glare of the sun. Everything was still a blur. He remembered the chaos of London as the Welsh army descended on it, a battle even he had never imagined the English would lose; he remembered the mesmerising sight of the dome of St Paul’s catching fire above them as librarians struggled to save what they could.
He remembered, when it counted, his father and brother turning their backs on him and running.
Most of all, he remembered being forced into the Translation Chamber, and the sickening ripping sensation of being destroyed and created again far, far from London … here in the Burner-held city of Philadelphia.
Sent to the rebellious colonies of America.
Jess and his friends hadn’t been granted any time to recover; they’d been dragged still sick and weak to what must have once been a sports stadium; in better times, maybe it had been filled with cheering crowds. Now it was half ruined, melted into a misshapen lump on one side of the concrete stands, and instead of a grassy field in the middle there was bare ground and a funeral pyre of books.
Jess couldn’t take his eyes off of them as they burnt, because he was thinking, sickly, We’re next.
‘Jess,’ said Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who was on his knees next to him in the dirt. ‘They’re not original books. They’re blanks.’ That was true. But Jess didn’t miss the tremors running through the man, either. The shine of Wolfe’s dark eyes was made of pure, unholy rage. He was right: blanks were just empty paper and bindings provided by the Great Library of Alexandria, vessels to hold words copied on command from originals kept safe within the Library’s archives. These were empty symbols that were burning. In any Library territory, they’d be cheaply and easily replaced, and nothing would be lost at all.
But seeing them destroyed still hurt. He’d been raised to love books, for all that his family had smuggled them, sold them, and profited by them.
Words were sacred things, and this was a particularly awful kind of heresy.
As he watched, the last book shivered in the rising heat, as if it might break free and escape the fire. But then the edges crisped, paper smoked, and it was gone in rising curls of ash.
Scholar Khalila Seif knelt on his left side, as straight and quiet as a statue. She looked perfectly calm; she had her hands resting lightly on her thighs, her head high and her hijab fluttering lightly at the edges in the hot breeze. Beneath the black silk Scholar’s outer robe she wore a still-clean dress, only a little muddy and ashen at the hem from their progress through London. Next to Khalila, Glain Wathen looked like she was only momentarily frozen in the act of rising – a lithe warrior, all vibrating tension. Beyond her was Thomas Schreiber, then Morgan Hault, then – last and least, in Jess’s thoughts – Dario Santiago. Outcast, even among their little band of exiles.
To Jess’s right was Scholar Wolfe and, beyond him, Captain Santi. That was the entire roll call of their party of prisoners, and not a single useful weapon among them. They’d not had time to make a plan. Jess couldn’t imagine any of them had much useful to say just now.
There was an audience in the crumbling stands: the good citizens of Philadelphia. A ragged, patchwork crowd of hard men and women and children who’d survived starvation, deprivation of all sorts, and constant attacks. They had no pity for the pampered servants of the Great Library.
What would Wolfe tell them, if he had the chance? That the Great Library was still a great and precious thing, something to be saved and not destroyed? That the cancer that had rotted it from within could still be healed? They’d never believe it. Jess took in a deep breath and choked on the stench of burning books. Imaginary Wolfe, he thought, gave crap speeches.
A man dressed in a fine-cut suit of black wool stepped up to block Jess’s view of the pyre. He was a tall, bespectacled fellow, full of the confidence of a man of property; he could have, by appearance, been a banker or a lawyer in a more normal sort of place. The smoke that rose black against the pale blue morning sky seemed to billow right from the crown of his head. His collar-length hair was the same grey as the ash.
Willinger Beck. Elected leader of the Burners of Philadelphia – and, by extension, all Burners everywhere, since this place was the symbol of their fanatical movement. The head fanatic in a movement composed entirely of fanatics.
He studied their faces without making any comment at all. He must have enjoyed what he saw.
‘Very impressive waste of resources,’ Scholar Wolfe said. His tone was sour, and completely bracing to Jess. Wolfe sounds the same, no matter what. ‘Is this a prelude to setting us on fire next?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Beck said. ‘Surely our learned guests understand the power of a symbol.’
‘This is barbaric,’ Khalila said from Jess’s other side. ‘A criminal waste.’
‘My dear Scholar, we handwrite our own books here. On paper we rescue by picking apart the Library’s blanks and destroying their alchemical bindings. You speak of us as barbaric? Do you know whose symbols you wear? You will not take that tone with us.’ At the end of it, his friendly voice sharpened into an edge.
Jess said, ‘Talk to her that way again and I’ll snap your kneecaps.’ His hands were not bound. He was free to move; they all were. Which meant they could, as a group, do serious damage before they were taken down by the Burner guards stationed behind them.
In theory, anyway. He knew the guard directly behind him held a gun barrel trained on the back of his neck, precisely where it could blow a hole that would instantly end his life.
But he’d got Beck’s attention, and his stare. Good.
‘Here now,’ Beck said, back to mild and reproving. ‘We should be friends, after all; we share a common sense that the Great Library of Alexandria has become a destructive parasite. It’s no longer some great, untouchable icon. There’s no need for anger between us.’
‘I’m not familiar with American customs,’ said Captain Santi, on the other side of Wolfe. He sounded pleasant and calm. Jess sincerely doubted he was either. ‘Is this how you treat your friends?’
‘Considering you alone put three of my men in the infirmary on your arrival, even in your weakened state? Yes,’ Beck said. ‘Captain Santi, we really do resist the Library, just as I am told you do. So should we all. The Library grants people pitiful drops of knowledge while it hoards up oceans for itself. Surely you, too, must see the way it manipulates the world to its own gain.’ He nodded at the black robe that Wolfe wore. ‘The common man calls you Scholars by another name: Stormcrows. That black robe isn’t a sign of your scholarship any more, and it isn’t an object of reverence. It’s a sign of the chaos and destruction you bring down in your wake.’
‘No,’ Wolfe said. ‘It still stands for what it’s always stood for: that I will die to preserve the knowledge of this world. I may hate the Archivist, I may want him and his brand of greed and cruelty gone, but I still hold to the ideals. The robe is a symbol of that.’ He paused, and his tone took on silky, dark contempt. ‘You, of all people, understand the power of a symbol.’
‘Oh, I do,’ Beck said. ‘Take the robe off.’
Wolfe’s chin went up, just a fraction. He was staring straight at Beck. His greying hair whipped in the hot breeze from the pyre, and still he didn’t blink as he said, simply, ‘No.’
‘Last chance, Scholar Wolfe. If you repudiate the Library now, it will all go better for you. It certainly doesn’t stand by you.’
‘No.’
Beck nodded to someone behind them, and Jess, from the corner of his eye, saw the flash of a knife being drawn. He tried to turn, but a hand fell hard on his shoulder, and the gun barrel pressed close enough to bruise the base of his skull.
He was already too late for any kind of rescue.
One of Beck’s guards grabbed Wolfe’s black robe by the sleeve and sliced the silk all the way to the neck – left sleeve, then right, efficient and ruthlessly precise cuts. With the flourish of a cheap street magician, the man tore the robe from Wolfe to leave him kneeling in plain, dark street clothes. He held the mangled fabric up above his head. A breeze heated by burning books caught the silk and fluttered it out like a ragged banner.
Wolfe’s expression never changed, but next to him, Niccolo Santi let out a purely murderous growl and came half up from his knees before the guard behind him slammed a heavy metal club into the back of his head. The blow crashed Santi back down. He looked dazed but still dangerous.
The man who’d taken Wolfe’s robe paraded it around, as proud as a strutting rooster, and from the stands applause and cheers swelled. It nearly covered up the muttering roar of burning books. Beck ignored that and pointed to Khalila. ‘Now her.’ Another guard stepped up to the young woman, but before he could use his knife, Khalila held up both hands. The gesture looked like an order, not a surrender, and it stopped the guard in his tracks.
‘I will stand up now,’ Khalila said. ‘I will not resist.’
The guard looked uncertainly at Beck, who raised his eyebrows and nodded.
Jess watched her tensely from the corner of his eye as she stood in a smooth, calm motion, and from her other side, he saw Glain doing the same, openly ready to fight if Khalila gave a sign she needed help.
But Khalila lifted her hands in a graceful, unhurried way to unfasten the catch that held the black silk robe closed at her throat. She slipped the robe off her shoulders and caught it as it fluttered down, then folded it with precise movements into a neat, smooth square.
Then she took a step forward and held the folded silk out, one hand supporting it, the other on top, like a queen presenting a gift to a subject. In one calculated move, she had taken Willinger Beck’s symbol away and made it her own. Jess felt a fierce surge of savage joy at the look on Beck’s face. He’d just been bested by a girl a quarter of his age, and the taste seemed bitter.
But he wasn’t taking that without hitting back, and Jess saw that an instant before Beck grabbed the folded robe and flung it into the pyre of burning books. Petty contempt, but it struck Jess like a gut punch. He saw a shiver run through Khalila, too … just the barest flinch. Like Wolfe, she lifted her chin. Defiant.
‘Only cowards are so afraid of a scrap of cloth,’ she said, clear enough to carry to the stands. There was a shimmer in her eyes: anger, not tears. ‘We may not agree with the Archivist; we may want to see him gone and better Scholars take his place. But we still stand for knowledge. You stand for nothing.’
Beck looked past her and gave a bare, terse nod to a guard, and in the next instant, Khalila was seized, yanked back, and forced to her knees. She almost fell, toppling towards Jess. He instinctively put out a hand to help her, and her fingers twined with his.
That was the instant he understood what she was really about. Removing her robe hadn’t been just defiance; it was distraction. Concealed between her fingers, she held a single metal hairpin – one she’d plucked from under her hijab.
She knew that in Jess’s hands, a hairpin was as good a weapon as any.
A vast, cooling sense of relief washed through his chest, and he exchanged a swift glance with her as he slipped the pin between his own fingers. She’s right. Sooner or later, there’ll be locks to open. If we live so long.
He let go of her and hid the metal inside his shirtsleeve. He’d need to find a better hiding place for it, but that would do for now.
Beck ignored them. He was busy throwing Wolfe’s robe to the flames. Farther down the line, they had taken Thomas’s robe, and Dario’s. Four robes flung onto the pyre, one by one, while the crowd roared approval. Jess expected the silk to burn fast, but instead the robes smoked, smouldered, shrivelled in, and finally turned to grey that began to powder at the edges. Hardly any drama to it at all, which must have been disappointing for Beck’s purposes. A stench of burning hair joined the meaty reek of crisping leather bindings, and for a moment, Jess had the vision again of a body burning in those flames.
One of their bodies.
‘Now we may start fresh,’ Beck said after the silk was nothing but a tangle of ashes. ‘You are no longer part of the Library. In time, you’ll come to see that we are your brothers and sisters.’
‘If you want to convince us of that, let us stand up,’ Santi said, and Jess could hear the ragged edge in his voice. A trickle of bright red blood ran down the sharp plane of his cheekbone from his hairline, but his eyes were clear and intensely focused on Beck. ‘Let us up and see how fraternal we can be.’
‘In time,’ Beck said. ‘In due time, Captain.’
Jess swallowed and tasted ashes. Fraternal. He didn’t want to believe that he and his friends – for whom this had started as personal loyalty, personal risk, and nothing they’d deliberately planned – had anything in common with Burners. He loathed them, even though they wanted books to be free, and owned by anyone who wanted them. He’d grown up a book smuggler, so by definition he believed in that same ideal.
But he didn’t believe in indiscriminate murder, either, and the Burners had been known to incinerate the guilty and the innocent alike, just to make their point.
The Great Library, for all its shining history and high ideals, had just as rotten a heart; it might even be worse. The Archivist Magister might love books just as he did, but that evil old man loved power far more. He and the Curia were part of a system that had turned toxic hundreds of years ago, when a long-dead Archivist had chosen to destroy an invention, and a Scholar, to keep his firm hold on power. Every Archivist since had chosen the same dark road. Maybe now they couldn’t see any other way.
But there had to be a way. The Library was too precious to let it fall without trying to save what was good at its heart. And if it was just the eight of them who’d fight to save it … then that was a start.
Saving anything didn’t seem very likely. He was on his knees in a ruined arena in a Burner-held city, with nothing but a hairpin. Still, to a criminal like him? A hairpin was enough.
‘I’ll ask you now,’ Beck said, raising his voice to be heard in the stands. The echoes came back cold. ‘Will you swear to join our city? To work for the ruin of the Great Library that keeps its foot on our necks, and the necks of every man, woman, and child on this earth? To do what must be done to prove our cause?’
He was walking down the line. He stopped in front of Dario Santiago.
Jess forgot to take in the next breath, because if there was a weak link in their chain, Beck had put his finger directly on it. Dario would do what was good for Dario. Without fail. None of them expected anything else, at this point.
Dario looked tired. He’d suffered some burns – so had Jess – in London, and his normal cocky grace was gone. He looked beaten.
So it came as a shock when he got to his feet to face Beck and said, very clearly, in as strong a voice as Jess could remember from him, ‘Really? Do I look like a witless Burner? Don’t insult me with the question.’ He followed it up with something in Spanish so fast Jess missed the meaning, but from scattered laughter in the stands, it must have been cutting.
Beck’s expression didn’t change. He took a step onward. Morgan Hault was next, and just like Dario, she stood up. Not especially tall, not especially strong. Her hair blew wild around her face, and if she was frightened, she didn’t show it as she said, ‘No.’ A clear, firm, unshakeable denial.
They held Thomas down on his knees, probably worrying that he’d do real damage if they let him get up. He gave his answer with a sweet, broad smile. ‘Of course not.’ He almost seemed amused.
Glain definitely wasn’t, and since she was held down as well, she contented herself with a rude gesture and a long string of Welsh syllables. Jess knew the gist of it well enough: get lost. Very Glain.
Khalila got up again. Like Thomas, she was smiling. ‘I absolutely will not agree,’ she said. ‘Foolish of you to even ask.’
Jess stayed down. No choice, really, since the guard behind him whispered, ‘Stand up and I’ll splatter you all over the ground.’ But Beck barely paused to hear his clipped no before moving on to Wolfe.
Wolfe had been still and calm the whole time, but it was a brittle kind of stillness. His answer came clipped and sharp. ‘Never.’
Next to him, Santi bared his teeth in a savage grin. ‘So say we all.’
Beck stared at them for such a long, silent moment that Jess started to sweat; that pyre was still hot, and he looked like a man who liked to make an example. But he finally shook his head and beckoned a woman of African descent who looked every bit as competent and dangerous as Glain. The woman moved like a trained soldier, though she wore no uniform, only a plain-spun shirt and trousers with heavy boots.
‘Very well. Lock them up—’
‘There’s the good Burner welcome I was waiting for,’ Wolfe said sourly.
‘—and see that they are well treated,’ Beck continued. But he glanced at Wolfe, and behind the artifice of good humour, there was something far darker. He was the leader of a city that was fighting a war, and worse than that, he was a true believer. A fanatic who didn’t hesitate to kill, maim, and destroy in his attempts to make the world in his own image. ‘But search them thoroughly. I want no mistakes.’
Jess’s fingers tightened over the fragile metal pin he’d embedded in the fabric of his shirtsleeve. He’d need to find a good hiding place. Quickly.
By the time he was allowed up off his knees, he found his legs were steady, and his stomach, too. At least this horrible bit of theatre had given them all time to recover from the shock of Translation and start to put their brains to use.
Philadelphia was going to be, in its own way, as dangerous a place as London, Rome, or Alexandria. It was impossible to know yet what the Burners wanted from them, or what they’d have to do to survive.
But that didn’t matter. The idea of going behind bars actually cheered him up.
After all, prisons – like locks – were made to be broken.
The guards weren’t stupid, which was too bad; they separated the party out, two by two, and shoved them into barred cells inside a long, low building made of heavy stone. Cramped ceilings, rudimentary toilets, but it was far from the worst Jess had ever seen. Didn’t even smell particularly bad. Maybe crime was low in Burnertown.
But more important, the locks on the cells were large, crude, and old.
By a little subtle manoeuvring that his friends managed without seeming to manage it, everyone sorted out nicely into ordered pairs: Wolfe and Santi, Glain and Khalila, Thomas and Jess. Dario and Morgan each managed their own private cells, which made Jess a little jealous. But only a little, because he needed to stay close to Thomas. The German had only just escaped from one prison. He might need help adjusting to yet another one.
‘Search them thoroughly. You don’t have to be gentle about it,’ the tall woman – Beck’s captain, Jess thought – said, and left without waiting to see it done. She left behind three men to do the job, which did seem adequate with the cell doors shut and locked.
‘Right,’ said one of the men – the squad leader, Jess thought – who had a dramatic scar on one cheek: a melted look, courtesy of Greek Fire. He didn’t seem particularly nice and, after considering the pickings, unlocked the cell that Glain and Khalila shared first. ‘You. Tall one. Step out.’
That was, of course, Glain. She likely looked like the bigger threat, though appearances might have been deceptive, depending on the situation. Glain shrugged, stepped out, and put her hands flat on the far stone wall of the hallway. Her quick glance at Wolfe asked the silent question: are we cooperating? Jess couldn’t see the reply from where he stood – there was a wall between his cell and the next, where Wolfe and Santi were held – but he saw her relax, so the answer must have been yes.
Glain took having a guard’s hands on her with the same indifference she gave most issues of modesty. Beyond saying, ‘You missed a spot. Bad form,’ to the man searching her, she gave him no trouble.
‘Right. Back in. You, in the veil. Come out.’
‘It’s not a veil,’ Khalila said as she moved into the centre hallway. ‘It’s called a hijab. Or a scarf, if you like.’
The guard surveyed her uncertainly, from head to toe. He was clearly not familiar with the traditional clothing that Khalila favoured; Glain in battered trousers hadn’t bothered him, but the volume of that dress did. ‘Against the wall,’ he said. Khalila obligingly leant, and though she clearly didn’t like being touched, especially so freely, she said nothing as the man searched her. ‘All right. Turn around.’
She did, and started back to her cell. He put out a hand to stop her. ‘No. Scarf comes off.’
‘It is against my religion. Does no one follow the Prophet here, blessings and peace be upon him? Here. I’ve removed the pins from my hair,’ Khalila said, and extended her hand to surrender a palm full of them. ‘I have nothing else hidden beneath it. I swear that.’
‘I don’t trust your oath, Scholar,’ the man said, and without any warning, he stepped behind her, grabbed a handful of the fabric of her hijab and yanked. Khalila’s head snapped back as the scarf was dragged off, and she let out a small cry of dismay and shock as she grabbed for the fabric. He shoved her hard against the bars of the cell with his hand on the back of her neck. ‘Stay still!’
‘Hey! Hands off!’ Jess shouted, as a sudden ball of fury ignited inside him like Greek Fire and he grabbed the bars and rattled them. Dario swore to knife the man in his sleep.
Khalila didn’t make another sound.
The guard pulled the scarf loose from where it sagged around Khalila’s neck, and a riot of smooth, basalt black hair cascaded down over her shoulders. He crumpled the fabric in his hand and stuck it in his belt. ‘Better,’ he said to her. ‘No special treatment around here for you or whatever god you follow, Scholar. Best you learn that quickly.’
Khalila turned whip fast to grab the man’s wrist and extended and twisted his whole arm. She continued the spin and pressed her palm hard into the back of his elbow, reversing it to the breaking point, and held him there as he cried out. He shifted to try to take the strain off the joint, and she pressed harder. This time, she got a shrill cry. His knees buckled.
The other guards moved forward, and Glain glided out to get in their way. Khalila acknowledged that with a quick flicker of a glance but kept her attention on the man she had in the painful, joint-cracking hold.
‘Don’t make me break it,’ she said. ‘Never do that again. Never. It’s insulting and disrespectful. Do you understand?’
‘Let go!’ he panted. Khalila took her head scarf from his belt and shoved him away. He got his balance and lowered his chin, and Jess saw him reach for a knife at his belt.
Glain, without a word, turned immediately and landed a swift, strong uppercut that jerked the guard’s head up and rolled his eyes back to the whites. Her distraction gave the other two guards an opening, of course, and one grabbed Glain and pushed her back against the wall. He slammed a fist straight into her guts. She grinned with bare, wet teeth. ‘Weak sauce, Burner,’ she almost purred. ‘Have another go.’
He followed up with a second punch, harder. Useless, and Jess knew it; Glain had made a lot of money in the High Garda barracks with this trick. As long as she had time to tense her abdominal muscles, he wouldn’t do her damage, and she’d never let on that it hurt. A bloody savage kind of game, but it suited Glain to the ground.
‘Enough,’ the last guard said, and shoved his friend back when he prepared to punch Glain again. ‘You, get back in the cell and there’ll be no more trouble,’ he told Khalila. ‘I won’t touch you if you don’t force me to it. All right? You can keep the scarf. No need for any more of this.’
Khalila nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You might want to check on your friend. I think he might need a Medica.’ She stepped over the man Glain had put down as she slid the scarf back over her head and began to tuck it into shape.
‘You too, soldier. Get back in,’ the third guard said to Glain, and stood out of her way. She hadn’t stopped smiling – it was a frighteningly feral thing – and walked without a care in the world into the cell. She managed to step on the fallen guard as she did so. He didn’t even groan.
‘I appreciate the help.’ Khalila held up her palm; Glain casually slapped it.
‘Oh, I did it for the fun,’ she said, and, with a flourish Jess rather enjoyed, swung the cell door closed once she was inside. It reminded him of Khalila removing her Scholar’s robe before it could be taken. ‘Well? Are you planning to lock it, y twpsyn?’ He didn’t know the Welsh term, but he assumed it wasn’t flattering.
The guard who’d punched Glain stepped up to turn the key. ‘Next time,’ he said to Glain.
‘Precious, next time I won’t just stand there,’ she replied. ‘And after that, I’ll send flowers.’
Jess laughed. ‘You know, Glain, there was a time when I didn’t like you. I was very stupid.’
Glain gave him that half-wild grin. ‘Shut up. You still are.’
The guards were a lot more careful, and they chose Morgan next; while they focused on her, Jess leant against the bars with his arms folded to wait his turn. That conveniently put his right hand close enough to extract the precious metal hairpin from his sleeve and tease a long loose strand from the fraying cloth. The resulting thread wasn’t as long as he would have preferred, but he was low on options. He tied the string one-handed onto the pin, made a running loop on the other end, and raised his hand to cover a cough as the guards finished with Morgan and locked her door. He pushed the loop over a back tooth and swallowed, and for a perilous second he was afraid the pin would catch in his throat before it slid through to dangle at the end of the string, halfway down his gullet.
It wasn’t comfortable.
‘Now you,’ the guard said, and unlocked the door to their cell. ‘Big one. No resistance or I swear, we’ll put you down for good.’ He pulled a gun this time and levelled it on Thomas as the big young man stepped out. ‘Face the wall. Hands up and flat on the stone. No sudden moves.’
Thomas seemed perfectly content to be searched, which was a relief to everyone; since his rescue from the Library’s secret prison, his reactions had an unpredictable quality that put Jess on edge at moments like this. But he stayed docile, was pronounced clear, and was sent back into the cell without trouble.
Jess’s turn went fast, but not fast enough; he’d never been as good at this magic trick as his brother Brendan, and sweat broke out on his brow as he fought the urge to gag the string and hairpin up again. He could maddeningly, constantly feel the foreign object in his throat, bouncing against tender parts, and even the fastest sweep of the guard’s hands felt like eternity. It was important not to panic. He’d seen smugglers choke on swallowed keys.
‘All right,’ the guard said, and shoved him back into the cell. ‘Next. You. Spaniard.’
Jess sat and slowed his breathing and pulse as best he could while the search went on. His stomach rolled and rebelled, but he somehow kept it from destroying him. Dario’s search began and ended. The third guard had come around by then, muttering drunkenly about revenge, and was sent on his way to see a Medica.
Even Wolfe and Santi submitted without trouble, as if they knew how important it was to get the guards out quickly.
The outer door finally shut behind the departing guards with a metallic clang, and Jess shut his eyes as he listened for the sound of keys. He heard them. So, he had individual cell locks to contend with and an outer door to get through as well. And one small hairpin to his name.
‘They’re gone,’ Thomas told him, and Jess opened his eyes. ‘You’ve turned the colour of spoilt milk. Are you sick?’
Jess held up a finger to signal him to wait and then reached into his mouth to take hold of the slippery piece of string. Relax, he told himself, and gave it a steady pull. He couldn’t hold back the half-retching cough as the pin slid free of his throat, but the temporary nausea was a small price to pay for the triumph of holding that pin up for Thomas to inspect. ‘Old street magician’s trick,’ Jess told him, and pulled the looped string off his tooth. ‘Swallow it down, vomit it up. Preferably without vomit.’
‘That,’ Thomas said with real admiration, ‘is disgusting.’
‘Agreed.’ Jess wiped the hairpin off and carefully bent it flat, then began to work the centre until it snapped into two halves. ‘So many useful things you learn running with a bad set.’
‘So I’m learning,’ Dario said from across the way. ‘What good will that do?’
‘Lockpicks.’
‘So? You unlock our cells. We’re still trapped in Philadelphia.’
‘Then I won’t unlock yours.’
‘I take it back, dear English!’
Jess ignored him as he bent one of the halves into a tension wrench and the other into the beginnings of a pick. Thomas leant forward to watch him work. ‘Do you need help?’ he asked, and Jess shook his head. ‘Dario is right, you know. Opening a lock isn’t escape.’
‘It’s one step towards it, and Dario’s never right.’
‘You know I can hear you,’ Dario said. ‘Because you’re talking out loud.’
‘Why do you think I said it?’ Jess used the fulcrum of a cell bar to put a bend into the pick where he wanted it, then knelt at the door to try out the feel. It required adjustments, which he made patiently, bit by bit, testing the lock and learning its peculiarities.
‘Khalila, are you all right?’ Dario asked. His voice had shifted, gone warm and quiet. ‘I’m sorry for what he did to you. That was vile.’
‘I’m all right,’ she said. She couldn’t see Dario from her side. Walls between them. ‘No damage done. You all stood with me. That matters more.’ Her voice was steady, but Jess could see her face. She was still shaken, and angry.
‘Well,’ he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else than the obvious truth, ‘we’re all family here, aren’t we? It’s what family does.’
She took in a quick breath, and let it slowly out. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose we are. And that means a great deal.’
Jess went back to work on the lock. ‘Mind you, if I claim you as family, that’s a huge step up for me, and probably several ones down for you,’ he said. ‘I never said it, but … sorry about my father letting us down, everyone. He’s always been rubbish as a parent. I just thought he was a better businessman than to let Burners get the better of him in a deal.’ And sell me out in the process, he thought, but didn’t say. It still hurt.
‘That wasn’t your fault,’ Morgan said. ‘My father tried to kill me, in case you’ve forgotten. Yours is the soul of family warmth next to him.’ She sat down on the bunk in her cell and pulled her feet up to sit cross-legged. ‘Oh, all right, I suppose I’ll claim the lot of you as my kin, too.’
‘Try not to sound so enthusiastic about it,’ Glain said. ‘And, no offence, but I have a great father and mother and a lot of excellent brothers, so I’ll be keeping them. Still, you make all-right friends, I’ll give you that.’
Khalila sighed and stretched. ‘Our time is going to pass very slowly if the only entertainment is listening to you all insult each other, and they won’t give us books.’
‘I can recite a few books,’ Thomas said. ‘If you’re bored already.’ He began sonorously droning some desert-dry text about gear ratios he’d committed to memory while the others begged him to stop, and Jess muttered under his breath and felt the lock’s stubborn, stiff mechanism and the unnerving fragility of his picks. Come on, he begged them. Work. He could feel the tension in the pick now and slipped the wrench in place for leverage. Hairpins weren’t the ideal material for this, given the weight of the lock, and his fingertips told him the metal was bending under the strain. Needs better angles. He suppressed a groan and slipped the lockpicks free, studying the damage done, then began working carefully to put a sharper bend in the pick. Slipped them in place again, and suddenly, it felt as if the whole mechanism was laid out before him, brilliant white lines shining in his mind’s eye. A subtle shift here, pressure there …
With a sudden, harsh click, the pick caught, held, and turned.
Thomas sat up straight, breaking off his recitation, as Jess pushed on the door. It slowly swung open.
‘Mother of God,’ Dario breathed, and rushed to his own cell door to wrap hands around the bars. ‘Well, come on, you beautiful criminal! Let us out!’
‘Changed your tune, didn’t you?’ Santi said. ‘Jess. That’s enough.’
‘Yes, sir.’ It was tempting to step out into the hall, very tempting to go try his luck on the outer door’s lock, but he knew Santi was right. He grabbed the loose door and swung it closed, held it there with his boot jammed through the bars while he plied the pick again to refasten it. That was easier.
‘No, no, no!’ Dario hammered the heel of his hand on the bars, a racket Jess could have well done without. ‘You fool, what are you doing?’
‘He’s biding his time, which you’ll also do, quietly,’ Santi said. ‘We need time to recover and regain our strength. We need to win their trust, scout the city, and make a decent plan of escape. That’s going to take time, and some measure of trust from our captors. We earn nothing making a useless attempt now.’
Dario must have known that was true enough, but his frustration was sharp enough to cut the air, and he hit the bars one last time and flung himself onto his bunk. No arguments, though. Not even Dario was foolish enough to rush out without a plan.
Santi made it sound easy, Jess thought, but it wouldn’t be. None of it. And he had the unpleasant thought that after escape, if they made it out of this city, then they were still in America, far from help.
Still, having the small length of metal in his hand, and a bit of control, quieted the storm inside his head from a hurricane to a grumble of thunder. The thunder was muttering, It’s useless; the metal won’t last; the picks will break. What then?
Out of nowhere, he remembered something his father had told him when he was just a child. When all the world is a lock, boy, you don’t make a key. You become a key.
Brightwell wisdom. Sharp, unsentimental, and right now, something that settled the last of his worry.
For the time being.
EPHEMERA
Text from the volume Liber de Potentia, addressing the dangers of unregulated Obscurists. For full reading only by the Curia and Archivist Magister. Certain sections available to the Medica division.
… the toxic effect of the overuse of Obscurist abilities. This is most clearly and dreadfully illustrated by the case of French Obscurist Gilles de Rais. While trained in the Iron Tower, he left of his own accord to return to his family lands (n.b., for this reason we recommend no further releases, even for compassionate reasons, be allowed from the Iron Tower). He then used his great talents not in the service of the Library, as he was sworn to do, but in raising up a French warrior to do battle against the English for purely partisan reasons.
De Rais used his God-granted quintessence to reckless and extravagant excess in keeping Jeanne d’Arc alive and well protected; while there is no doubt the woman was a born fighter who would have donethe High Garda great credit had she been drawn to its service, his constant use of power to strengthen her armour and heal her wounds took the inevitable toll upon them both.
De Rais’s power increased, as is typical for an Obscurist allowed to hone his skills without restriction, but as Aristotle himself observed, that which comes in contact with contaminants is never again clean. His healings began well enough, but as the rot inside him took hold, his touch brought madness, fevers, and, ultimately, the downfall of his own sworn champion.
Retreating to his castle, he swore to resurrect the fallen Jeanne. Corrupted from within, and maddened with it, he enacted a resulting horror within those walls that is a thing of terrible legend. That he was eventually purged by fire by his own people can only be seen as justice.
His case is, therefore, a stark warning to those who believe that Obscurists may be left on their own to manage their power and duties unchecked. Inside the Iron Tower, Obscurists use their powers in a careful and constructed way; the very metal of the Tower itself acts to limit their ability. To this end, and with the dark example of Gilles de Rais before us, we must recommend that all Obscurists be for ever confined to the Iron Tower, save for specific missions that lead them beyond its protection, and on those rare occasions, that they be carefully watched. Should any signs of danger emerge, the Obscurist must be immediately and decisively prevented fromany further use of power until natural healing, if possible, may occur.
While contamination may be reversed in early stages, it nevertheless poses a grave threat not only to the Obscurist who carries it, but also to all those nearby.
Power holds always the hidden edge of threat.
CHAPTER TWO
In the morning, well before sunrise, Jess woke and started a systematic inventory of the cell, down to the stones, mortar, and bars.
Thomas overflowed his narrow bunk, hands folded on his chest, and his breathing seemed even and calm, but in the dim light seeping in the high window, Jess saw he wasn’t asleep. Thomas’s blue eyes were open, staring at the ceiling – but not a blank stare. His mind was all too active.
‘What are you thinking?’ Jess asked quietly as he stood on his bunk and pulled at the iron bars on the cell window. He kept it to a neutral question, because it was likely that the other young man’s thoughts were on the past. These cells were cleaner than the Library’s, and thus far refreshingly free of torture devices, but the similarities still chilled. He couldn’t imagine what being imprisoned dredged up for Thomas, who’d endured months in that hell.
Thomas let two slow breaths pass in and out before he said, ‘I expect they’ll try to take Morgan first.’
That was far from what he’d been expecting, and Jess swung down to the floor with an almost noiseless hop. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘The Burners may hate the Library, but they’re not stupid – at least, not this nest of them. They’ve resisted for more than a hundred years, and turned the American colonies into boiling pots of trouble on all fronts for the Library. Beck will fully understand the advantages of having a pet Obscurist. She could help them in their terrorist operations, repair their Translation Chamber, create their own Codex … They could build their own splinter version of the Great Library here in Philadelphia, but under their own control. They have original books, I imagine. What they need is an Obscurist. The rest of us …’ Thomas shrugged. ‘We’re only a bonus.’
A new voice said, ‘We must use skills to our advantage.’ That was Khalila, who perched on the edge of her cot near her cell’s door. ‘Our knowledge is our value. We have to make them see that.’
‘Did you not hear the part where they’re likely to take Morgan by force?’
‘Morgan is right here, and quite tired of being talked about as if she’s some delicate treasure,’ Morgan said. ‘I’m in the least danger of all of you; Thomas just eloquently pointed that out.’
‘Is nobody asleep?’ Jess asked in exasperation.
It drew a dry laugh from Dario’s cell, though the Spaniard didn’t bother to rise at all. ‘Have you tried finding a comfortable position on these devil’s excuses for beds? Khalila’s right. Work with the Burners, or escape. Those are our choices.’
‘There is no working with them,’ Scholar Wolfe said. Jess couldn’t see him; he was on the other side of the stone wall to Jess’s left. ‘There is appearing to work with them, and that is a means to a greater end than just survival. We need to have a goal of escaping not the cells, not the building, but the city. Even after, we must have a plan for what comes next. Make no move without knowing at least three ahead.’
‘I have a plan. Build my mechanical printer,’ Thomas said. ‘Use it to break the Library’s hold on knowledge. That is a good plan.’
‘That isn’t a plan, my poor engineer. That is a goal,’ Dario said. ‘A plan is steps we take to achieve the goal. You know, the boring part of being clever.’
‘I know how to build my part,’ Thomas replied. ‘Which is more than I can say of you, Dario.’
‘Gentlemen, didn’t we agree we are family?’ Khalila said.
‘I argue with my family,’ Dario said. ‘But yes, desert flower. I will do better.’
‘Agreed,’ Thomas said. ‘I apologise. I’m sure Dario has some skill I’m not aware of.’
Khalila almost laughed. ‘Then let’s proceed. Beck isn’t stupid, or overly fanatical, or he wouldn’t have survived as their leader this long. So …’
‘So we offer him something he won’t find in the books he confiscated from us,’ Jess said. ‘As Thomas said. The press.’
Dario made a rude noise. ‘Stupid idea. Once he has the plans, he has no need of us.’
‘You forget, he’s got no need of us now,’ Wolfe said. His tone was as heavy and sharp as a guillotine blade. ‘The only one of us he actually needs is Morgan. The rest of us are – as Thomas so correctly put it – bonuses. He has to want us alive.’
Thomas still hadn’t moved from his deathlike stillness on the bunk. His gaze hadn’t varied from the shadowed ceiling. ‘Then I don’t give him the plans. I build the press first and prove to him it works,’ he said. ‘And Jess builds it with me. Along with Morgan, that gives us three Beck can’t kill, and it buys us time.’
‘He’ll accept that for you. Jess is just another pair of hands.’
‘I hate to say it, but Beck does need me,’ Jess said. ‘Not for my brilliant mind so much as his own survival. Have you looked around this so-called town? It isn’t staying alive on its own merits; the buildings are half ruins, the people all but starved.’
‘A hundred years of unrelenting siege will do that,’ Santi said.
‘And they don’t survive on whatever meagre crops they raise in here. At least, not completely.’
Santi’s voice turned contemplative. ‘I see your point. This town survives on smugglers getting them extra food and supplies.’
‘Exactly. And those smugglers will have ties that lead back to my family, one way or another. I’m more valuable for what I represent, once Beck knows who I am. I’m worth better terms and more supplies. Or the reverse, because if he kills me, he loses his flow of supplies.’
‘Nice for you,’ Dario said. ‘That last bit is particularly good. I mean, better chance of us escaping in the chaos, of course, if you want to volunteer as sacrificial goat.’
Jess replied silently. With a gesture.
‘Getting beyond these walls will be a much greater challenge,’ said Santi. ‘The walls have been standing for a hundred years – treated by an Obscurist, most likely, to withstand Greek Fire and other, more conventional bombardment. Plus, there are no fewer than four full High Garda companies stationed around the walls of Philadelphia, and they’re constantly on watch. My own company—’ His voice hesitated a bit, as if he’d only just remembered that they’d abandoned everything to save Thomas, including his position as a High Garda captain, and so, his soldiers. ‘My own company spent a year here, some time ago.’
‘About that,’ Dario said. ‘I’d have thought the impressive armed High Garda could defeat a few hundred Burners inside a half-ruined city in less than a week, never mind a hundred years.’
‘Standing orders from two Archivists back,’ Santi answered. ‘The American colonies have always been a powder keg of dissent. Burning Philadelphia could set the whole continent ablaze. Containment is the policy, with occasional bombardments.’
‘And I assume you had run-ins with smugglers.’
‘Of course. We caught hundreds of amateurs. Most were fanatics caught trying to fling supplies over the walls.’
‘Any of them ever use one of your ballistae?’ Jess asked.
‘What?’
‘To throw supplies. I would have. Could get a lot over in a couple of quick tosses.’
‘Thank God you were not advising them.’ Santi sounded amused at that one. ‘Jess – I’m all for using your family’s reputation, but don’t push Beck too far. He might kill you just to make the point that he doesn’t need your father’s goodwill. He has an ego.’
‘You sound as if you know him,’ Jess said.
‘I should; we study him. He’s survived here, head of a desperate group trapped like rats, and he’s kept order by being equal parts clever and ruthless. His math is very cold: he doesn’t keep anyone alive, wasting resources, who doesn’t gain him something.’
Khalila said, ‘Scholar Wolfe, Dario and I can interpret the books we brought from the Black Archives; I know Master Beck was quite excited about those. Most of the books are in dead and obscure languages I doubt anyone else in Philadelphia can decipher. That might give us some protection, at least for a time.’
‘That still leaves Glain and Santi,’ Wolfe said. ‘And I’m not giving them up.’
Glain groaned sleepily and said, ‘Would you all just shut up and let me rest? We’re High Garda. We’ll survive. Chatter when the sun’s up, you wretches.’
‘Do you want us to sing to you?’ Dario asked.
‘I swear to my gods and yours, Dario. Shut. Up.’
After that, it went quiet again. Some of them, Jess sensed, did go back to sleep. Not him. Not Thomas. Jess went back to a fingertip search of the cell, mind as white as a snowfield. His father had taught him how to look for hidden panels and triggers doing this, but the same principle served for anything you were looking to discover. It just took patience and focus.
From time to time, he glanced up at Thomas. The other young man hadn’t closed his eyes. He looked … dead. But Jess had no doubt that the mind inside that skull was whirring at top speed.
Jess finally paused his search. He’d covered most of the cell, and his back was on fire, his fingertips raw from scraping them over stone. He sat down on the floor to lean against his friend’s cot. ‘You all right?’ He whispered it softly enough that it wouldn’t wake Thomas if he was asleep.
But he wasn’t at all surprised to get a reply.
‘To be truthful, I’m glad you’re here, Jess.’ He didn’t say the rest, but Jess could guess. Being trapped in a cell again, even surrounded by friends, wasn’t good for him. Thomas had endured torment in that dark hell underneath Rome; he’d survived unimaginable things, and it had taken a toll. Jess wanted to ask, but he knew better; there was a gulf between what they could say and what they would say. Best to keep things simple. Thomas was fragile, raw inside and out, and the ugly truth of it was they needed him strong if they were going to survive Philadelphia.
Thomas said, ‘Would you stay there while I sleep a little?’
Jess looked over his shoulder and saw that Thomas’s gaze had shifted to him. Neither of them looked away, and Jess finally said, ‘I’ll stand watch.’
It was, he thought, exactly what Thomas needed, and with a sigh, the big German closed his eyes and let himself finally drift away.
Jess fell asleep, too, despite the hard stones under his behind, and the chill. He dreamt he was a guard at a gate, and the gate was on fire, and he knew, he knew, that what waited beyond it was something terrible and monstrous and impossible to defeat. But that he’d have to fight it anyway. The hopelessness of it overwhelmed him.
