'Don't joke? What should I do, weep? Will it help?'
'It might,' he said, thinking of those desperate walking dead outside the gates. 'We're taking too long. Just read the titles.'
Glain began a steady drone of them, and when Jess didn't know them, he used the Codex. He spotted Morgan, finally; she was off with Wolfe in a corner, arguing fiercely. He couldn't hear anything, but he knew that look.
She wanted to find her father, he guessed. And Wolfe wasn't risking her out on the streets. Good, Jess thought. From what he'd seen out there, the chances were high that if she found her father at all, he'd already be dead.
'Focus,' Glain said, and snapped fingers in front of his face. 'You're slowing down. Stare at your girlfriend later.'
'She isn't my girlfriend,' Jess said.
And got back to work.
It took hours to work their way through the enormous stack; at the end, each team took their unique and rare book stacks and moved them to one of the end tables. It still formed a formidable mountain. As Wolfe examined each volume himself, and sorted it into two more stacks, he glanced up. His dark gaze landed on Jess. 'Check outside,' he said. 'Santi hasn't been in to give a report. Not like him.'
Jess nodded and hurried down the hallway. Glain preceded him, opened the locked door, and let him through. He glanced back as he stepped over the threshold, and said, 'You're locking me out, aren't you?'
'Just for safety,' she said, and smiled. 'Good luck.'
She shoved him on a step and slammed the wood at his back. He heard the locks grinding shut behind him, and took in a breath of icy, damp air as he took in the situation of the courtyard.
The weather had turned while he was in the timeless silence of the Bodleian building; overhead, the clouds were flat and low, and the rain had turned to spits of sleet. The ancient steps were coated and slick.
There was blood on the cobblestones inside the gates, in a wide, watery smear. New chains fastening the stout iron; the lock must have broken. Outside the gates lay bodies, at least ten of them - men, women, even the small, still form of a child. Jess stared at them, at the blood, and when he looked up, he saw Niccolo Santi.
The captain looked grim. There was a thin thread of blood on his cheek that wasn't his own, and cuts in the black cloth on the arm of his uniform. 'What are you doing out here?' he demanded. Jess took in the rest of the scene in a hasty glance - one set of soldiers standing guard at the bars, another sitting against the courtyard walls, huddled in coverings. One was very still beneath his blanket - asleep, badly injured, or dead.
'Wolfe sent me to check.'
'Tell him we were lucky. This old ironwork isn't likely to keep them back next time, and neither will our guns; if they come in numbers, they'll get into the courtyard this time.'
'How many of your men--'
'Just tell him the sand's running fast,' Santi said. 'And leave someone stationed at the door to open it if we need to retreat.'
'You think the mob will come back?'
'They're convinced that the library is filled with sacks of food and fresh running water and fairy dust. They'll come.' Santi looked in the direction of the gate, held shut with new chains. 'Soon, I think.'
Jess retreated back up the stairs. He banged on the door, and listened to the scrape of the locks and bars being removed. He tried to imagine standing out here under vicious attack, killing the sick, the weak, children.
Knowledge is all. The Library's motto, and this was what it meant in the real world. It meant that nothing, nothing was more valuable. Not even lives.
It seemed like mockery, looking at those desperate faces.
Jess shoved the door open the instant it was free, pushing Glain back. When she protested, he ignored it. 'Keep it unlocked,' he told her. 'And stay here. Santi may need to retreat at any time.'
'But--'
'Stay here!'
He stalked down the hall. The drag of his muddy Library cape on his shoulders made him feel older. Harder. More breakable than he had been just a few days before.
He reported to Wolfe. Wolfe had attention only for the books he was combing through, but he nodded. 'Good,' he said. 'We're ready to start tagging. I need you.'
'I put Glain on the door, sir.'
'Good. She's well placed.' Finally, Wolfe looked up at him. Jess's classmates were grouped together at the other end of the table with the Oxford Library staff, whispering; no one was obviously listening to him and Wolfe, yet he knew that all of them were paying attention. 'How many tags can you handle?'
Jess's first impulse was to honestly say, I don't know, but instead, what came out was entirely different. 'As many as you need.'
'Do ten, rest, eat, do ten more. Keep going until you can't. Understand?'
'Yes, sir.' Wolfe handed him a supply of tags.
'We're supposed to enter them by hand in the Codex--'
'Skip the tick boxes. Seif! Santiago! Get over here. I'll want you to do three tags, break for food and five minutes' rest, then three more. When you start feeling sick, step out.'
Jess started on the stack in front of him. Ten, then rest. Adrenaline carried him through tagging and sending the first set; he pushed it and kept going through another five. The books would be appearing in the Archive, into the hands of an Obscurist whose job it was to hand them off to Library staff for safekeeping. One by one by one, Jess kept sending.
He'd lost count when he felt weakness take hold, and staggered against the edge of the table. He grabbed it with both hands and held on until his head stopped spinning. Thomas handed him a pressed ration bar of nuts and honey and fruits, and Jess ate it without any appetite, then washed it down with a mouthful of water. 'Easy,' Thomas said. 'You make us look bad. Sit.'
Jess nodded; he suddenly realised his legs weren't holding him up any more, and dropped into a chair. He watched as Khalila took her turn. She activated five in a row, staggered, and caught herself. Dario steadied her with an outstretched hand on her back. She sent him a shaky, grateful smile. Dario sent his own books and managed not to seem affected, though Jess saw he'd gone bone pale. Jess stepped in and relieved him. 'Here,' he said, and passed Dario a cup of water. 'Don't want you to get ahead of me.'
'Quality, not quantity,' Dario shot back, as he collapsed in the chair Jess had left behind.
They both knew that wasn't true. Not today.
It went on like that, though the players changed; Jess managed fifty tags more before he had to sit down for a long rest, head spinning, body too weak to stand. Keeping rations down was difficult. Librarian Ebele and Wolfe managed a hundred together, but she collapsed completely and had to be carried to a hard bed on a table nearby. Her skin had gone the ashy colour of someone near death. Wolfe didn't pause, though he did step back to eat and drink and sit, and watch the next wave - Ebele's colleagues, with Morgan and Thomas - continue to steadily tag the pile of books back to the safety of the Alexandrian collection.
They'd managed almost all the stack when he heard the clamour echoing from the hallway. It rushed towards them, in the form of Santi, Glain, and the bloodied, hard-breathing bulk of the soldiers. Some of them were being carried, some dragged. Hardly any of them were unmarked.
'Lost the courtyard,' Santi said to Wolfe. Over his words, Jess heard the angry roar of a crowd outside the heavy stone walls, and the thud of hands - or weapons - on the door through which Santi's men had come. 'They've broken the lion. Leave the rest of this.'
'No,' Wolfe said. 'We'll have to hand-carry them.'
'You've got five tags left. Use them on the students, at least. Send them home.'
'We both know the trip could kill them. Tags aren't designed for flesh and blood.'
'We're past that. Send them.' Santi turned towards the students, who'd clustered together again. Jess found himself standing with Dario and Glain, the others behind them. Fighters in front, he thought, and almost smiled. They'd done it unconsciously.
'I'll stay,' Jess said, and heard both Dario and Glain saying it at the same mome
nt, in chorus. They all looked at each other, and in the next instant, the rest were saying it behind them. Thomas. Morgan. Portero. Khalila. All of them.
'Let me phrase it differently. Who volunteers to take a tag and retreat back to Alexandria?'
'Is it worse than the Translation Chamber?'
'Infinitely worse,' Santi said. 'We use tags when there is absolutely no escape. I've survived it, though. You probably would.'
Portero gave a regretful sigh. 'The books come first, sir. Isn't that how it should be? Books before men?'
Wolfe almost smiled. 'As you see. They're not children. They're librarians.'
Santi didn't seem all that surprised, but he did seem even more grim, if that was possible. 'Your librarians look like death chewed, swallowed, and vomited them up,' he said. 'We have bigger problems. Our major general of the walking dead changed his mind: he's not letting us walk out the front gates. He's offered extra rations to anyone who brings us in to him, alive. He intends to use us as hostages.'
Wolfe nodded. He was silent a moment, and then suddenly looked at Jess. 'We knew that might happen.'
'And the Welsh aren't going to hold back,' Santi said. 'They'll kill us along with the English, we both know it. We need an exit, Christopher, and I don't have one now that you've used all the tags.'
'I believe young Brightwell may be able to help with that.'
Jess involuntarily took a step back, only to run into the solid bulk of Thomas standing behind him, and caught himself in the next instant. Of course, Wolfe would know. Santi would have told him about the message, even if he didn't understand what it meant.
He'd worry about the level of danger later. Nothing mattered now but finding a way out of the rat-trap they were in, so Jess said, 'I may be able to get us out. It'll cost, though.'
Wolfe didn't seem at all surprised. 'Where do we go?'
Beneath the sod, Brendan had written in his message. 'My cousin Frederick should be at the Turf Tavern, sir. Off of Hell's Passage. He'll have a way.'
'Nic?'
'Map,' Santi said, and one of his soldiers stepped up to open a round case that held the information. Santi spread the paper - not a blank, real paper, with the information meticulously drawn on it - on the table and anchored the corners with the tags that lay there. 'We're here,' he said, and pressed a fingertip to the small image of a building in a warren of others. 'The Turf Tavern is here. Not far, but narrow, especially through Hell's Passage. Hell of a risk if this mob catches up.'
'Not if we give them something else to focus on.' Naomi Ebele rose slowly from the table on which she rested, and stood up. One of her fellow librarians took her arm, and she gave him a grateful smile in return. 'Scholar Wolfe, please send what you can, and take the rest. Help us move the rest back to the vault, and we'll let them have the Serapeum. They can search to their heart's content for our stores of food. It will keep them busy enough.'
'They'll destroy the place,' Khalila said. Her voice was hushed, and Jess felt the same dawning, dull horror ... this ancient place, with its wood beams hundreds of years old, the gold-leaf ceiling lovingly made, the beautiful high windows. 'They'll tear it to pieces when they don't find what they want.'
'I know,' Ebele said. There were tears in her eyes as she looked around, and she put a hand gently on a smooth, age-darkened shelf. 'And we will build it again.'
Santi said, to Jess, 'Just who is this cousin of yours?'
'It doesn't matter,' Wolfe said. 'If he can get us out, anything else is moot. Postulants, help Librarian Ebele take books to the cellar. We don't have time to waste - no, not you, Brightwell. You're with me. We have five more tags left to use, then we take the rest and divide them up. Each one of you will take a few in your pack. Guard them with your lives.'
The other students went with the Oxford library staff, and Santi's troops dispersed to scout the exits and routes, and suddenly Jess was standing almost alone with Christopher Wolfe in the middle of the doomed Bodelian Serapeum. Wolfe calmly clipped the last of the tags to five more books and handed them to Jess to activate, one by one.
'How long have you known?' Jess asked. His voice came ragged and harsh, between deep breaths, as he struggled for the energy to send the two volumes off to safety. 'About my family?'
'Since the day you found that hidden compartment in Abdul Nejem's house,' Wolfe said. 'You did a good job of dissembling, but someone unfamiliar with the smuggling trade would never have found it. I admit, finding out about your family's business was much more difficult. I thought your father was merely a collector at first.' For a moment, the older man's expression was the usual harsh, empty mask, and then it softened as Jess wavered and almost dropped. Wolfe grabbed him and eased him into a chair, then crouched next to him with his black robes pooling like spilt ink on the floor. 'Listen to me. I am prepared to overlook your family and your past, and keep your secrets; I'm always ready to do that, for talent that will serve the Library. But just now, it's your past, and your family, that will save us. So use it. Use them.'
'Just like you're using me?' Jess tipped his head back to stop it from spinning. 'Just like my father always did. Are you using Morgan, too?'
Wolfe was silent, but he put a warm hand on Jess's head for a moment, then rose and walked away.
Maybe he had nothing he could say in response to the truth.
EPHEMERA
Directive from the Obscurist Magnus to the Aylesbury High Garda commander. Confirmed in his reply, without annotations.
We anticipate the successful completion of Scholar Wolfe's journey to Oxford within twenty-four hours. When his party arrives in Aylesbury, you are instructed to remove Postulant Morgan Hault from the party of Scholar Wolfe, by force if necessary. Postulant Hault is not to be harmed under any circumstances, but should Wolfe, Santi or any of the others attempt to interfere with this order, you have authority to do what is necessary.
You are ordered to deliver said postulant to the nearest Translation Chamber, to be sent with armed escort directly to the Iron Tower.
Confirm your receipt of this message.
CHAPTER NINE
Jess's backpack was heavier than it had been before, weighted down with as many books as he could safely carry; they were all burdened, according to their ability, though the outer rank of soldiers had the lightest burdens so as to fight effectively.
So far, though, luck was with them. They didn't need to fight.
Librarian Ebele had been right; once they'd abandoned the Serapeum, the mob had re-formed at the front, ripped through the old iron bars, and was busy tearing the ancient place to pieces as they hunted for the rumoured caches of food and water. It was like listening to a murder, and they all moved as quickly and quietly as possible to get distance from it. The Oxford staff wept quietly. Wolfe kept Naomi Ebele close to him, and Jess could see why; she seemed distracted and almost feeble now. She'd pushed herself too hard.
They all had.
The sleet was falling more steadily now, a constant grey hiss, and Jess put up his hood to keep it out. The weatherproofed silk was already stiff with a thin, sheer coat of ice, and he was cold to the bones. They were in a narrow alleyway now, and only able to pass through two abreast. The cobbles were awash in slick mud, and it smelt like a sewer. He tried to breathe shallowly, but it did little good; that stench soaked through even the smallest gasp.
The small alleyway opened out onto another street, this one all but deserted. There were a few people at the far corner, but they seemed too disheartened to care about the passage of their party. The riot was still behind them. When Jess looked back, he saw what looked like black smoke rising up to stain the grey clouds.
They made it to the tavern without incident, which seemed half a miracle. The Turf Tavern was a hallowed institution in Oxford, almost as old as the Bodelian Serapeum, and it usually served as a friendly gathering place for all levels of Oxford society.
Not now. Now, it was surrounded by a group of hard-looking, scarred men armed with guns a
nd knives. A few had even dragged out swords, maces, and axes for the occasion.
Jess pushed through to the front and took down his hood. 'I'm Jess. Looking for Frederick.'
The men - every one of them topping him by at least a foot, and broader by far - gave him identical looks of disdain, but at length one of them stepped back into the shadows of the open doorway beneath the low roof.
The man who emerged next had the Brightwell sharp features, though his eyes were lighter and his hair a different shade than Jess's family side sported. Frederick's gaze missed nothing - not the numbers of High Garda soldiers, the arms, the readiness - but he was all sunny smiles as he stepped forward and extended his hand to Jess. 'Cousin,' he said. 'A warm welcome to Oxford. How has your trip been so far? Eventful, I'd guess, or you'd not be calling on me. Lucky thing, your timing, because we were about to take our leave of this death-house of a town.'
'So you do have a way out?'
'Naturally. For a price.' Frederick grinned, and lines seamed his face. He was only three years older than Jess, but seemed far more worn; maybe it was the smuggling life, or maybe it was the strain of watching his home city die by inches. 'Family comes free, since I'm feeling generous, but as you're associating with the enemy these days, you have to pay for your ... friends.'
'And what's the price for them?'
'You're fresh from the Serapeum. You'll be carrying something worth my time. Make it good and we'll see how friendly I feel. After all, you've exposed me to not just the High Garda, but a damned Scholar. It had best be good enough to buy me a new life.'
Jess was prepared for that. He'd already bargained with Wolfe for something that would be dear enough to pay for the lives of all of their party. So he shrugged off his pack and said, 'We'd better do it inside. I'm not risking this to the weather.'
'Good idea. I'd spot you a pint, except we drank all the ale ages back,' Frederick said. He led the way into the dimness of the deserted tavern, which was a warren of small rooms, low ceilings, heavy dark beams. One of the walls was the only remaining trace of the original city fortifications, before it had grown so large, and it was worn from the passage of hands and shoulders.