Wolfe turned his face away, and in a flash of passing light from outside, Jess saw that there were tears streaking his face.
That, finally, was what made Jess really afraid.
As much as he hated being trapped in the moving cell, he dreaded what might come next, and when the carriage rolled to a stop, Jess tensed himself for a fight. He wasn't sure how much he could do, given his bound hands; escape was impossible, given the trackers. But he wasn't going quietly.
'Stay calm,' Wolfe said. He sounded calm, at least. 'Jess. Are you listening to me?'
'What if they're dead?' Jess asked. His voice was shaking, and he couldn't seem to control that.
'They're not,' Santi sounded sure of it. 'Maybe they'd have killed them outside the city. They won't do it here. Don't lose faith.'
Faith. Faith in what? He'd believed in the Library, the ideal of it, anyway. He'd believed that it was doing good, and more, that it wanted to do good. But now he'd seen the dirty underside, and he couldn't hold on to his faith much longer.
The doors opened, and Jess blinked in the sudden light of glows turned to their maximum brilliance. 'Out,' a voice in shadow said. 'Santi, then Brightwell, then Wolfe. Go.'
That was a High Garda trooper, no doubt about it; the tone was one Jess had become familiar with on the road. Jess followed the orders, though he found it harder than he'd expected to step out of the high bed of the carriage with bound hands. He ended up jumping. He heard Wolfe's boots hit the ground behind him.
The glows turned lower, and his eyes adjusted to pick out the soldiers arrayed around them. Six of them to three bound men. At least they had a healthy respect for their captives.
'Brightwell. Come this way.'
He hesitated, but Wolfe nodded sharply to him. A guard took him by the elbow and led him away while the other two were taken a different way. He tried to get his bearings, and finally it struck him just where they were: the Alexandria Serapeum, but on a side of it he'd never seen before. A heavily fortified, highly secured side.
This was the face of the pyramid that held the offices of the Artifex Magnus, and - somewhere in that warren - the other Curators, and the Archivist himself.
'Where did you take Scholar Wolfe?' he asked his guard, who was only a little younger than his own age, by appearance. No answer, and the pace picked up as they strode through an ornate outer chamber lined with rare original volumes set behind glass. From there, hallways spread out like spokes, and each had a traditional Egyptian hieroglyph inset with gold atop the lintel. He should have been fascinated, any other time - awed, by walking halls that the greatest minds of the world had inhabited through the ages.
Instead, he could only feel sick anger, and fear - and then, a wave of relief almost as strong, as he caught sight of the party coming towards him from the hallway marked with the Medica symbol.
Khalila was the first to reach him, and she threw her arms around him with shaking strength. 'Thank Allah you're all right! We looked for you, we thought you'd been taken too ... where have you been?' Her happiness faded as she realised that his hands were pinned behind him. 'Jess?'
Dario and Glain were right behind her. Khalila had pulled on a thick, striped robe, and her hijab, but he could tell that she had been pulled from her bed. Dario was wearing a loose shirt and linen trousers that had probably served him for nightwear. Glain had on only a plain nightgown, her feet stuck in the same mud-stained boots she'd worn to Oxford.
'Where's Thomas?' Jess asked. His throat ached with tension.
They exchanged looks. Dario put his hands on Khalila's shoulders. 'They told us he was injured in a Burner attack on Ptolemy House. First we knew about it, we were being dragged out of bed and brought here.'
'But you're all right?'
Glain nodded firmly. 'We're all right.' But even Glain's eyes were bright with what looked like fear now. She didn't like this. None of them did. 'We asked why Thomas wasn't with us. They didn't say.'
'I'll find out,' Jess promised, and his guard pulled his elbow to tow him onward. 'Find Wolfe and Santi!'
His escort took him down the hallway that was marked with the name of the Artifex Magnus, and he had to turn his attention forward, because all too soon his friends were out of view.
This area of the Serapeum smelt like sandalwood and oils, and at this hour of the night it seemed deserted. There were rooms off to the sides of the halls that held desks at which people must have worked, but Jess had only time for glances as he was marched relentlessly to the end, where a large, ornate door was decorated with the goddess Nut spreading her golden feathers. It stood partially open.
And in the room behind it stood the Artifex Magnus. He paced in front of a large golden desk, in a pale-yellow room decorated with old Egyptian gods in the classic Alexandrian styles. Except for the desk and a few chairs, the only other thing the room held were books. Not blanks, original ancient volumes, scores of them, all uneven in size and shape. The room smelt of old paper and leather, overwhelming the rare wood of the hallway.
The guard stood Jess in the middle of the room and, to Jess's surprise, cut his bindings loose. The Artifex nodded to him. 'You may go,' he said to the guard. 'Close the door.'
It shut with a heavy boom, and Jess heard a lock engage. No escape that way. No wonder they didn't need the bindings here.
'Where's Thomas?'
'Let's set the ground rules now, Brightwell. I ask the questions, you answer, because if you do not, this will go spectacularly wrong for you. Then, if I choose, I will answer one of yours. Understood?' The Artifex's voice sounded calm and cold, and Jess unwillingly nodded. 'Now. Why did you go off in the middle of the night in search of Scholar Wolfe?'
Jess wanted to ask about Thomas again, but he knew that wouldn't help. 'I needed to ask whether or not he was going to recommend me for a posting.'
'You don't strike me as particularly anxious about your future at the Library. Ah, correction. Didn't. You have good reason to be anxious now.'
'I can't go back home if I fail here. I needed to know for sure that I wouldn't be sent away.' The best lie, Jess's father had taught him, was always mostly truth. In fact, this one was completely true, and Jess heard the tremor in his voice as he said it. 'Wolfe found out something about my family I didn't want known. I thought he was going to reject me for placement.'
The Artifex picked up a marble ball from the top of his desk and rolled it restlessly in his gnarled fingers. 'I see. Even if that is true, why did Wolfe and Santi come back with you to Ptolemy House?'
'I was drunk and angry. Wolfe didn't want me on my own, so he and Captain Santi took me back. That's all.'
The Artifex Magnus clasped his hands behind his back and stared at him. An old man. An old face. Eyes as sharp as chips of ice. He doesn't believe me, Jess thought.
'We have reason to believe that in addition to young Guillaume Danton, may his soul rest in eternal peace, there was another Burner acolyte in your class. One conducting dangerous experiments under the cover of night. Were you aware of this?'
'No,' Jess said, and only then realised with a sickening drop in his stomach that the Artifex was talking about Thomas. 'What sort of experiments?'
'The sort that result in chaos, blood, and death.' The Artifex's pale lips twitched in the cover of his white beard, but he didn't answer directly. 'It seems very odd that you were absent from the house when our men arrived. I would have thought you, like your fellows, would have been longing for bed after your ... adventures.'
Adventures. That was one word for it, Jess supposed; the kind of word used by someone who kept his murder at a distance. 'I've answered your questions enough. Where's Thomas?'
That earned him a long, long stare, as if the old man was weighing him. Like the Egyptian goddess Ma'at, weighing a man's soul against a feather. 'I regret to inform you that the young man succumbed to injuries he sustained at Ptolemy House. Evidence suggests that someone struck him on the head as he lay asleep in his bed. Perhaps his attacker remov
ed the body before it could be discovered. Perhaps we are still searching for it.' Those cold, cold eyes froze him from the inside out. 'And then, of course, the attacker came back, with accomplices, to clean up after himself. Shall I spell it out for you? I should think you are clever enough to work out the narrative.'
'Thomas is dead?' Jess no longer felt clever. He couldn't understand even that one simple fact, though he'd feared it since he saw the blood in his friend's room. 'He can't be dead.'
'You killed him,' the Artifex said. 'Or so the story might go. A drunken fight that got out of hand, perhaps ... common, in all the wrong and sad meanings of that word. Then you panicked. You ran to Scholar Wolfe, thinking he would help you hide your crime. But unhappily for you, young Schreiber survived just long enough to send a message for help to the Garda. They removed the others from the house, for their own safety, of course. Sadly, your friend Thomas expired before he could receive help.'
'I didn't--' Jess couldn't stop the protest, but he managed to stop after those two blurted words. It wouldn't matter. The Artifex knew damned well he hadn't killed his best friend. The truth was what the Library wanted it to be. That was the lesson being taught here.
'Of course you didn't kill him. However, I can build a convincing case against you - and the price of that would be your death. And Wolfe's. And Captain Santi's, which is a genuine regret, because he is very capable.' The Artifex was still rolling the marble ball in his fingers, but now he set it carefully back on its small golden stand on his desk. 'Your fellow students might also be suspect.'
'What the hell do you want?' Jess dimly recognised the tense, gravelly tone of his voice; it reminded him of his father's voice, the day that Liam had been hanged for book running. The day that his father's heart had shattered, and been bolted back together hard as iron.
'From this moment on, you will become my eyes and ears,' the Artifex said. 'Scholar Wolfe is a dangerous man, with dangerous leanings, and although he has powerful protection, he can and must be brought down. Your friend Thomas fell under his influence, and his death may be laid directly at Wolfe's feet.'
Jess's fists were clenched at his sides, which he only realised when he became aware of the pain. He deliberately loosened them. 'You want me to spy on Wolfe. For you, who killed my best friend.'
'I think you're a smart, capable lad who has a bright future in the Library, and you'll do what's best for yourself. You understand practical considerations; you were raised by a practical family. Thomas was brilliant, but fatally naive. You won't make the same mistake.'
'Do you really think I'll work for you?'
'Oh, I think you'd rather spy than swing like your brother Liam,' the Artifex said. He pressed a button on his desk, and the door unlocked behind Jess with a thick, metallic click. He felt the wave of air as it opened. He looked back to see two Garda behind him. One was taking a fresh pair of binders from his belt. 'Yes or no. I need your answer.'
'How can you even be sure I'll tell you the truth?'
'Do you really think you would be my only source of information? If I catch you in even one lie, you'll hang. Yes or no, Jess. The sand's almost run from your hourglass.'
Jess shut his eyes for a few seconds, not because he was uncertain, but because he didn't want to look at the man any more. He had a sickening urge, nearly impossible to resist, to grab that marble ball and beat the old man's head in, just as they'd done to Thomas.
'Yes,' he said softly. 'What will I say to Wolfe?'
'You'll tell him that I questioned and released you. From now on, you will write me handwritten reports when anything of interest occurs regarding Scholar Wolfe. Do you understand? And as I said, there will be other eyes watching. I'll know if you try to cheat me.'
'Why don't you just kill him?' Jess asked. He opened his eyes now, because he wanted to see the old man's face as he answered.
'With some enemies, it's safer to let them destroy themselves.' The man went around his desk, sat, and made a dismissing gesture as he opened the leather-bound blank on his desk. 'I expect to hear from you soon, Brightwell. Very soon.'
EPHEMERA
Transcript of the questioning of Postulant Thomas Schreiber by the Artifex Magnus, transferred to the Black Archives under orders of the Curators.
ARTIFEX: Explain how you developed the idea for this device.
SCHREIBER: I like to tinker with things. My little cousins had wooden blocks I carved for them, with letters on each side. We had a game of spelling words and pressing them into the mud--
ARTIFEX: Who encouraged you to build it?
SCHREIBER: No one, sir. I wanted to see if it worked. I thought once it did I would show it to Scholar Wolfe.
ARTIFEX: And did you? Show it to Wolfe?
SCHREIBER: No, sir. I never had the chance. We only just returned and I couldn't sleep, so I worked on it. It only began to work tonight. I was planning to show it to him tomorrow. Sir, I don't understand - have I made a mistake? Doesn't the Library benefit from such a thing?
ARTIFEX: Wolfe never saw this machine. And you never showed him plans, drawings, discussed your ideas for it. He never encouraged you in this mission to undermine the Library?
SCHREIBER: Sir! No, no, that is not at all what I am doing! I only mean to help the Library, never hurt it. Scholar Wolfe had no knowledge of it. I wanted to wait to show him once it was ready.
ARTIFEX: Don't be afraid, postulant. No one doubts your skill, or your genius. It takes a very bright young man to do what you did, and invent something that is so ... world-shaking.
SCHREIBER: Thank you, sir. I am glad you think so. I can work on it to make it better, if you will give me a workshop and tools to--
ARTIFEX: Do you know what happens when the world shakes, Thomas? Cities fall. People are crushed. Empires break. The very foundations of the Library shatter. When I say it is a world-shaking invention, it is not a compliment. It is a condemnation.
(SCHREIBER is recorded as silent.)
ARTIFEX: Who else saw the plans? The machine?
SCHREIBER: No one, sir.
ARTIFEX: Is there a hand-drawn copy of these diagrams?
SCHREIBER: I only put it in my personal journal. No one else saw it.
ARTIFEX: We will, of course, make sure you are telling the truth.
SCHREIBER: You're going to destroy the press?
ARTIFEX: Oh no, boy. We're simply adding it to the warehouse of many similar inventions. You're not the first to think of such a thing. Merely the latest.
SCHREIBER: You're going to kill me.
ARTIFEX: Some ideas are like a virulent, persistent virus. They must be ruthlessly eradicated before an infection spreads. It is an unpleasant rule of medicine that diseased limbs must be severed for the health of the body. One last time, tell us who else knows, and you may live out your days in a cell, instead of dying in an unmarked grave.
(SCHREIBER is recorded as silent.)
ARTIFEX: May whatever god you follow have mercy upon you.
(The Artifex then directed that Schreiber be taken to a place of questioning.)
End of record.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Jess was escorted out of the Serapeum, the world was warming to a clear dawn; the eastern horizon was layered with soft yellow and warm orange, while the western sky still showed indigo. The Serapeum pyramid's top three tiers of stone were bathed in a blazing glow, and the golden capstone shone like the as-yet-unseen sun.
It was beautiful, and eternal, and Jess averted his eyes at the sight of it. His head pounded from a mix of tension and weariness, and he felt desperately sick. The guards didn't bind him this time. They escorted him through the courtyard, past rows of guardian statues thick as an army's column, and out into an area shaded beneath spreading olive trees that were heavy with fruit.
His friends were there. All but Thomas.
Glain saw him first, and spoke to the others; Dario was embracing Khalila, but he let go when he saw Jess, and they all came at a run to meet him. It
should have made things better to be with friends, but he was only starting to realise that he had no friends now. Only people he could ruin and betray.
Thomas is dead.
'What happened?' Dario asked him. 'Brightwell? Jess? Come on, English, talk.'
'Let go, Dario.' Khalila was, as always, more perceptive. And she saw the shocked distance in Jess, even if she didn't know what it was. 'He's not well, can't you see that?'
'Too much to drink, like the rest of us,' Dario dismissed it, but he did let go of Jess's shirt, and stepped back. 'Did you find Thomas?'
Jess shook his head. He couldn't find his voice, not yet.
'Well then, come on. Wolfe's waiting.'
With some enemies, it's safer to let them destroy themselves. The Artifex, for all his massive power, was afraid of Wolfe. Why would that be possible?
It hit him as all the small, seemingly random pieces fit together in a blinding flash. Wolfe, born to Obscurist parents in the Iron Tower. Family connections that Monsieur Danton had mentioned. And it had been right in front of him, when Wolfe and the Obscurist Magnus had stood together on the High Garda parade ground.
Christopher Wolfe even looked like his mother.
And his mother was the Obscurist Magnus.
'Jess?' Glain put her hand on his shoulder. It wasn't a gentle gesture, as it would have been from Khalila - more of a fellow-soldier tap that simply lingered. 'Thomas. Do you know where he is?'
'He's dead,' Jess said. He watched her eyes dilate in shock, and her expression go flat and lifeless. 'Come on. Wolfe's waiting.'
He shook off Glain's hand and walked after the others, through dawn's soft light, towards the Scholar Steps.
The sphinxes were restless today, red eyes glowing, heads turning as the four of them climbed the endless stairs. Thomas would have joked about it. He'd have offered to carry at least two of them on his back, and he'd have been strong enough to do it, at least part of the way.
His absence felt like ... a severed limb. An emptiness so large that Jess couldn't yet understand the shape of it.
He counted steps silently, just to keep his mind from chasing the image of Thomas's last moments ... of the Artifex, watching the cold, clinical execution of his friend. If the climb was tiring, he didn't feel it. His body operated like a machine, like one of Thomas's wonderful automata, and when he finally reached the landing at the top of the Serapeum, he realised that he had left the other three far behind, still toiling through the last third of the climb. His clothing - still what he'd thrown on when going down into the cellar to see Thomas's marvellous press - was soaked through with sweat and clinging to him unpleasantly; his throat ached from gasping. He needed water before the sharp, stabbing aches in his calf muscles turned to crippling spasms.