'Aren't you going to ask me what that suspicious message was about?'
She shook her head. 'It's not my business.'
'How do you know I'm not some kind of Burner, here to blow up the place?'
'Are you?'
'I think the better question is, are you?'
They were suddenly locked in a wide-eyed stare, and it occurred to Jess that it was just ... insanely ridiculous. A spy for smugglers and a hidden Obscurist, and all they could do was ask each other if they were Burners.
It was so sad it was actually funny.
Jess got up and searched behind the blanks on the far wall, where he knew Portero had hidden a half-empty bottle of wine. He poured two glasses and handed one to Morgan. 'Cheers to well-kept secrets.'
She tipped her glass vaguely in his direction. 'So you're not here for the obvious reasons, either.'
'Doubt it's even just the two of us. Danton seems to know quite a lot about Burner tactics. Even Khalila worries me from time to time.' He took a deep gulp. Cheap stuff, but it didn't matter.
'Did you want to come here? To the Library?'
'I was sent. Mostly my father's idea. He's ...' Jess shook his head. 'It's not something I can talk about.'
She shrugged. 'I'll be gone soon. It won't matter. And I know how hard it is keeping secrets. Sometimes, you just need to tell them.' She let out a strange little laugh, fragile and oddly charming. 'I should be terrified, because you know about me. I haven't trusted anyone in so long. But instead I feel ... I feel better that you know.' She took another drink, and didn't quite look at him. 'I feel safer.'
He hadn't known, until that moment, how desperately he craved that feeling ... the feeling of letting down his guard, of having someone see him for who he really was. Not the Jess Brightwell he'd constructed over the years, his silent lie to everyone outside his family. Go on, some mad little voice inside him said. Who can she tell? You can send her to the Tower with a wrong word. He could tell a little. Just the worst of it.
'Do you know what an ink-licker is?' he asked her, and startled her. She turned towards him, eyes going wide.
'Not really. Only that it's--'
'Perverted? Yeah. It is.' He pulled in a deep breath and let it slowly trickle out. 'I saw one eat a book. The rarest book in the world, Aristotle's On Sphere Making. And I gave it to him. Wasn't supposed to go that way, I thought he was just - just a collector. But he chewed it up, like it was the rarest feast. Sickest thing I ever saw.'
She covered her mouth with her hand, stricken, and he liked her the better for that. For the horror in her eyes. 'That's appalling,' she said. 'I'm so sorry. How ... when ...?'
'I was ten,' he said. 'Ten years old. He's dead now, the ink-licker.'
'How did you get your hands on an original book like--' She stopped herself and studied him for a long moment, then shook her head. 'I think I can guess. Don't tell me.'
He waited for the inevitable look of shock, or revulsion. When it didn't come, Jess said, 'Now you can turn me in, too. I suppose that makes us even.'
Morgan didn't say anything. Her expression said volumes, though. She understood being out of place. Being alone, always. Burdened with secrets and afraid of every wrong word.
They had a great deal in common. How strange.
He finished his wine in the warm, comfortable silence. For the first time in a long time, he felt relaxed. I probably just made a terrible mistake, he thought. But it might have been worth it to feel this way. To feel ... free.
He finally said, 'Aren't you afraid? Being in the enemy camp?'
Morgan gazed at him for so long he thought she wouldn't answer, and then she slowly smiled and sipped her wine. 'Yes,' she said. 'From the moment I left Oxford until now, I've been absolutely terrified.'
She didn't elaborate. He didn't either.
Until now.
He wouldn't dare break that trust.
They didn't speak again. They finished their glasses, and Jess closed his eyes, half-reclining on the couch. I'm daft, he thought. Daft to trust someone who's done nothing but lie to me from the start. She could go straight to the High Garda. Turn me in. She was probably thinking the very same thing of him.
He didn't mean to, but he drifted off to sleep. He just barely sensed something like the soft brush of fingers across his face, and then he was off in dreams.
Quiet, pleasant dreams.
He was lying on the couch alone when the bells rang.
Not the usual morning bells. These had a different tone altogether. Jess bolted upright, because these bells sounded like emergency tones to him, and they didn't shut off. Fire? No smoke, but he supposed it was possible.
By the time he made it to the common room door, others were coming out of their rooms, breathless and just as alarmed. Only some were already dressed for the day. One of them was Morgan, neat and tidy in her pale-blue linen dress, with her hair up.
He looked at her for too long, and she returned it. We should watch that. Someone will notice. But what would that matter? What was wrong with noticing a girl?
Thomas came from downstairs in the basement, rubbing grease from his hands onto his trousers. He looked as if he'd slept in his clothes, if he'd slept at all.
'Is it a fire?' Khalila shouted over the alarms, as she ran towards them. She'd thrown on her clothes, but her headscarf wasn't pinned as neatly as usual. Bits of dark, smooth hair poked out. Glain, behind her, wasn't just dressed, she looked as if she'd been up for hours. 'Please tell me it's not a fire!'
The bells cut off, and left a deafening silence.
'It's not.' The answer came from the front door of Ptolemy House, where Captain Santi was just entering. 'It's a summons. You're to report to the Scholars' Reading Room in the Serapeum. Don't waste time. This isn't a test.'
Jess believed him. There was something deadly serious about the way he looked at their little group. Serious, and regretful.
'The pyramid?' Dario said. 'We're going to the pyramid?'
'Right to the top,' Santi said. 'Hurry up. The carriage is waiting.'
Those who weren't already dressed scattered to remedy that; Thomas muttered something under his breath in German and went to put on something clean. Jess, Glain and Morgan remained in the hall, with Santi.
'Sir,' Glain asked. 'What is this about?'
'I'm not here to answer your questions. I'm here to get you where you're going.'
'Is it - is this where we get our final ranking? Where we get our appointments?'
Santi stared at her in a way that clearly said question time was over, and Glain gave it up. Jess's pulse quickened, though. She could be right.
This could be Wolfe's final decision.
He saw Morgan's face, then, and realised that there was another option, a far worse one.
Maybe this hadn't come from Wolfe at all. Maybe one of them was about to be found out.
The hissing progress of the carriage carried them past the familiar borders of Alexandria University, and close to the Iron Tower, which dominated almost everything in view, except the pyramid. It doesn't rust, Jess remembered Thomas saying, and this close, he could see that his friend was right. The iron was black, pitted, and almost unmarked by streaks of dark red, for all its age. Massive. Forbidding. Why iron? Jess wondered. Does it help them in their work? He'd avoided alchemy as best he could; he didn't care for being shut away in labs, smelling foul chemicals all day, but he remembered that iron was an important alchemical symbol, all bound up with blood and the earth. Morgan would know.
Morgan was sitting beside him, and the backs of their hands brushed. Just lightly, just the backs, but the warm softness of her skin was distracting.
So were her secrets.
The Iron Tower fell behind, and the massive bulk of the pyramid grew and grew. 'I knew it was big,' Danton said, staring out the window next to him. 'I never knew it was this big.' He sounded awestruck, and Jess thought that maybe he'd been wrong about the boy being a Burner. He seemed impressed, not outraged.
&nb
sp; The carriage arrived at the Serapeum. Santi got them all out, and Glain looked around with the same care she'd taken on the street the day before, when they'd been scouting the Burner house. 'Which way?' she asked Santi.
He nodded at the steps.
The breath went out of Jess just looking at them. They were endless, straight up, though there were a few landings along the way with benches for those who needed respite. At the top, the rising sun sparked gold from the pyramid's capstone. It seemed ridiculously far up.
'Fantastic,' Dario said grimly, and led the way on the long climb.
Dario's lead lasted to the first landing, and then Glain's long, seemingly tireless legs pulled her into the front. Jess was content to let her have it anyway; the steps were shallow, but mindlessly eternal. He looked up and paused for breath ... and for the first time, realised that there were automata reclining on the marble on either side of the landing.
Sphinxes.
The statue to his right turned its head and stared at him with flickering red eyes. Jess had to fight the instinctive urge to back away, because these creatures were even more disturbing than the lions of London; the sphinxes had eerily human faces, set off by the ancient Egyptian headdresses of pharaohs. A human face on an automaton was infinitely more disquieting, because it was all the more inhuman.
The flickering red in the eyes continued and grew brighter.
'Hold up your wrist,' Dario said from behind him. He sounded as out of breath as Jess felt. 'Your sleeve covers it, and they need to see the band. Do it.'
Jess did, slowly, showing the statue his Library postulant wristband. The sphinx's eyes flashed white, and it settled back into its crouch. Morgan was hastily rolling back the sleeves of her gown on the other side of the landing, too, since that automaton was restless as well.
'Maybe Wolfe's hoping the creatures will remove a few more of us for him,' Thomas said. He meant it for a joke, but it was a dour one. Despite all the differences - the gleaming pyramid, the rising Alexandrian sun, the clean, orderly city laid out beneath with its flat roofs and statues of lost gods - Jess felt he was back in grey London, stalked by lions.
Danton had stopped next to them now. He was shorter than most of them, and the steps must have been even more of a challenge, since he was the last one up. 'What are you afraid of? They're just automata. They're on every street in America.' It reminded Jess of an ancient Greek text he'd read once: The animated figures stand, adorning every public street, and seem to breathe in stone, or move their marble feet.
He'd always found it chilling, not thrilling.
'If you didn't have so many Burners in your land, perhaps there wouldn't be so many statues,' Thomas said. 'We have very few in Germany, you know.'
'Maybe we have so many Burners because the Library keeps adding more automata.'
'Chicken, egg, omelette,' Jess said. 'Stop arguing, the both of you.'
'And stop talking about breakfast,' Dario groaned. 'I'm starving.'
'Climb,' Thomas said. 'You'll forget.'
He was right. By the time Jess achieved the second of the three landings, food was the last thing on his mind. His legs burnt, and so did his lungs, and he still had hundreds of steps to go. Glain was halfway up the last set, and not slowing. Good for her.
Morgan joined them on the steps, and as Thomas and Dario took the last set upward, she held Jess back to fiercely whisper, 'Do you think this is a trap?'
'For you?' he asked. 'Or for me? I don't know. Maybe.'
'What can we do?'
He nodded to the sphinxes, gazing off into the distance. 'Nothing,' he said. 'We can't run, can we?'
Morgan followed his motion, and stared thoughtfully at the automaton.
It turned its head and met her gaze.
'Morgan. Come on.'
She didn't seem to want to move, but he grabbed her elbow and forced her up for a few steps.
When he looked back, the automaton had turned its head almost completely around at an utterly disturbing, inhuman angle.
Watching them.
Jess climbed faster.
They joined the others at the top in the shadow of the ancient stone portico. Portero, Himura and Danton behind them, the last still labouring up the stairs. Next to him, Morgan leant forward, bracing her arms on her thighs; her chest heaved for breath. Jess was just as exhausted, but he held himself upright and tried to slow his breathing as he gazed out over the city. It was a magnificent view ... all of the glittering, elegant glory of Alexandria laid out around the pyramid like spokes in a wheel. The harbour was a silken teal blue in the growing morning light, perfect as a jewel, and the ships drifting there small as toys. The breeze up here was fast and cool on his sweating face.
Staring down from the pyramid's golden capstone was the Library symbol, and the motto: Tota est scientia. Knowledge is all. A multitude of sins could hide in that all-encompassing shadow.
When the last three joined them, the nine of them looked at each other. 'Well?' Glain demanded. 'Anyone?' When no one moved, she shook her head and stalked to the closed marble door under the capstone. It glided open under her touch.
'You first,' Dario muttered, but he immediately followed second.
The hall they passed through was lined with the portraits of ancient librarians. Not a single one looked as if they'd ever learnt to smile. It took almost a full minute of gloomy progress before Glain arrived at a massive set of square wooden doors set with iron bands and intricately carved with the seal of the Library.
The portal opened at her push, and buttery light from the room spilt out over them. Ranks of amber lights cast pools of brilliance down from a high, pointed ceiling onto gleaming wooden tables, and books.
The Scholars' Reading Room.
The shelves surrounded the room, floor to high angled ceiling - blanks already filled with Codex information in a permanent collection, like the ones Jess's father had in his office. And there, on the far western wall, stood an entire case of originals. Not, Jess thought, anything rare, but enough to allow Scholars to touch real paper, smell real ink, weigh real history. Handling originals was an important part of a Scholar's life - finding them, saving them, preserving them for the future.
Defending them.
The room was empty. No sign of Wolfe. No sign of anyone, in fact. Tables stretched out across the room, some stacked with untidy piles of blanks as if those who'd been here had left in a hurry.
It seemed unnaturally quiet.
'Should we sit?' Thomas asked. When no one answered, he shrugged and took a chair at one of the tables. They all followed suit. Jess wanted one with easy exits, but Dario beat him there, and Danton claimed the other logical choice. He chose a seat next to Morgan instead.
Then, they waited. Time ticked by, and with every silent moment, Jess felt the tension crank tighter. This is wrong, he thought. Why now? Is it because I found out about Morgan? Is it even Wolfe we're waiting for?
It was.
Wolfe arrived dressed, as always, in Scholar robes, so that was comforting in its own cold, familiar way. What wasn't so comforting was the fact that he didn't come alone. Santi was with him, and took up a post near the door, but Santi was only one of an entire contingent of High Garda men and women, all dressed in full uniform who filed in and took up positions.
In the middle of that parade of force came a new form in billowing robes, but his weren't black.
They were a brilliant purple.
Jess had never seen one of them, but he knew that only the seven Curators of the Great Library wore that colour, by law.
Beside him, Morgan took in a breath and whispered, 'That's the Artifex Magnus.'
Artifex. Mathematics, engineering, the practical arts. Jess studied the man as he moved forward, and if he'd had to boil his thoughts down to a single word, it would have been intimidating. The man's white hair was shorn close to the scalp, and his face was square and lean and strong beneath a shocking white brush of beard.
He looked grim. Impossib
le to tell if that was his usual manner, or a sign of what was coming.
'I am honoured to introduce the Artifex Magnus,' Wolfe said. 'Attend to his words.'
That made Jess's stomach go tight and his mind go still. There was something ominous in Wolfe's stiff posture, the distant glitter of his eyes. The presence of the Artifex alone made it an earth-shaking event that no one could possibly have predicted. Someone in the position of a Curator, charged with the preservation of the Great Library itself, could not be here just to impress students.
'We have a pressing issue,' the Artifex said; he had a deep, resonant voice, one that must have delivered thousands of speeches. 'Oxford has been under siege for some time. All negotiations have failed. The English king has ordered that no surrender be given, and both sides have informed us, as is required by the accords, that the Serapeum at Oxford may be damaged in the conflict. They've agreed to the standard evacuation ceasefire so that we may withdraw Library personnel.'
Morgan's body trembled, just a little, but her expression didn't flicker. She was from Oxford. She had family there. This was personal to her.
'The Library staff have been guaranteed safe passage from the city, and most have exited, but therein lies our problem,' the Artifex continued. 'The staff left before the discovery of a cache of rare books beneath the Serapeum. Since most of our librarians are already gone, those who remain cannot possibly handle the removal of so much. To make it more critical, if the English forces discover we are in possession of such a treasure, they might use it as a bargaining chip.'
'Bargaining chip?' Thomas seemed stunned by the idea. 'But surely they would want to save the books, not put them at more risk! That is in the accords!'
'In theory,' the Artifex agreed. 'In the fog of war, such things become fluid. So we must send in additional staff to assist in tagging and archiving the books.'
'And you're sending us,' Jess guessed. 'Why?'
The Artifex's frosted blue eyes fixed on him. They were the colour of unforgiving winter, and Jess felt a chill go through him to match. 'In part, because of you, Brightwell,' he said. 'There are only a few among us capable of handling the transfer of so many books, so quickly; your skill then becomes essential. Likewise, Postulant Hault's familiarity with the city benefits us. Even Postulant Wathen's Welsh connections may come in handy for the fulfilment of the mission.'