'I'll kill you,' Dario growled. It came up from the depths of him, and Jess believed he meant it.
'For what?' Jess asked. 'Other than just on general principles? What do you think I did?'
'My Codex,' Dario said. 'You took it, out of revenge. Give it back.'
That was serious. To steal someone's Codex was to cut off access to the Library, and even under normal circumstances that would be a vile thing to do; now, with Wolfe's class reaping a daily crop of failures, it was catastrophic.
'I didn't take it,' Jess said, and held out his hand. Dario stared at him for a second, then took the offer and let Jess haul him back to his feet. 'I'd do a lot of things. Thought of sending your entire wardrobe to Barcelona, in fact, and making you beg for it back. But I didn't do that, and I didn't take your Codex.'
'Unfortunately, I believe you,' Dario said. 'But admit it, you were the most likely suspect.'
'I'm flattered. Where did you leave it?'
'Are you going to be my mother now, and tell me to look in the last place I saw it? Vete al diablo! It was here. On my desk. And now it is not.'
Jess went to the door. It swung easily open. 'I locked the door. Someone opened it.'
'I ... might have done that when I came in.'
'Left it unlocked?'
Dario shrugged. 'Maybe ... also not closed. There was wine involved. But I didn't lose my Codex. I've never been that drunk.'
'Just buy a new one. You're not poor.'
'My father gave it to me,' Dario said. He looked away. 'When I was ten. It was the last gift I had from him. I want it back.'
Jess pulled in a breath and let it out.
'All right. Let's look,' he said. 'In case you really were that drunk.'
He was checking the tangled bedding when Dario, over by the desk, said, 'I think I know what happened.' His voice sounded odd. As Jess came towards him, Dario handed him a piece of paper with a handwritten note.
You shove your money and nobility and privilege down our throats, and expect us to smile and thank you. We've had enough of you. Take the next train home, and we'll return your Codex. Stay, and you'll never see it again.
No signature.
'It's not from you,' Dario said. 'You'd tell me to my face.' He sank into the desk chair, staring out at the thick orange dawn smudging the eastern horizon.
'Who else have you tried to bully out of here?'
Dario's shrug said it all. 'Everyone, at one time or another. I earned this, didn't I?'
'You did.' No reason to lie about it. 'What are you going to do, then? Give in and leave?'
Dario sat silently for a moment, then took in an audible breath and said, 'It's just a Codex. I'll get another, as you said.' But there was something broken in his gaze. 'Leave me alone, scrubber.' He pulled out his personal journal and pen. Jess understood the impulse, all too well, to spill out the bile and hurt into ink, where no one could see it.
He didn't waste the opportunity to be the first into the bathroom.
EPHEMERA
Text of a note sent via Codex to Jess Brightwell from his mother, Charity Brightwell:
My dearest boy:
I pray this message finds you well and happy in your exciting new life. Your father and I miss you awfully each day, as does your brother, who likewise sends his best wishes. Business is going well, he says, and he hopes that one day you will be able to participate in it in a more meaningful way.
Your father received an appointment to a select committee on the beautification of our borough. As a consequence, Lord Peter Foxworth had us to dinner the other night to discuss hedges. It was a lovely event, and I know you would have greatly enjoyed meeting his daughter Juliet, who is quite lovely. Your uncle Thaddeus has retired and moved to his country home in the north, and has made it known that we are always welcome there. He fears that London may fall victim to the Welsh advance, but we don't believe that could ever happen, of course. Surely the army will stop them.
I am eager to hear all of the news of your brilliant success, Jess. Please do write, and know that I send my love.
Fondly,
Your mother
A separate note from Callum Brightwell, attached to the same message. Suspected of hidden coded messaging and reviewed by Obscurists. Found to be inconclusive.
Greetings from your old da, boy. Always remember the words of Descartes: The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries. Take full advantage of your opportunities at the Great Library, and do your family proud. All your siblings, living and dead, count upon you to prove your worth to the world. And don't forget your cousins. They're eager to see you again.
CHAPTER THREE
When Jess got the letter from home, he knew his father was finally calling in the debt. Mother's letter was mere camouflage, but his father's scribble ... that was different.
Father had mentioned Descartes in his note. It was an urgent code, quoting Descartes, who was his father's least favourite philosopher. Jess, as he read the message, felt his pulse quicken. All your siblings ... Brendan and Liam, but Jess knew there had been a third child born after Liam and before him and his brother. Stillborn. So that made three siblings. Descartes' third work was on the subject of optics and refraction, which meant his father was telling him to look ... but look for what?
Worth to the world. An odd turn of phrase for his father, and Jess read it several times before the meaning sank in. It was a quotation, hiding in plain sight. He couldn't quite place the work in question by memory, and he didn't dare an obvious request to the Library to track it down.
His father wanted him to obtain the book where that quotation was to be found, and deliver it to his cousins ... names his father had made him memorise before he'd boarded the train for Alexandria. Distant relations, some of them, but just as often trusted colleagues in the trade.
In that one message, his father had ordered him to search for a particular book, and to deliver it to contacts in the Alexandrian smuggling trade ... and by using a quotation by Descartes, he'd indicated how urgent the acquisition was.
Very.
His first real job, on behalf of the Brightwells.
Jess had expected to feel exhilarated in that moment, useful at last, but instead, he felt ... used. Nothing different about that, he told himself. He'd been used by his family since the day he'd been old enough to run. You don't have to do it, some little part of him whispered. He can't punish you now. He's got too much invested. What if he was caught? Not only would he be dismissed, but this time, he wasn't just an anonymous cutter in the streets of London. He'd be known. Identified.
Turning down his father had just as many risks.
'Everything all right?'
Jess flinched and almost fumbled his Codex, because Thomas was right at his shoulder, and Jess hadn't sensed his approach. Too stealthy by far, for such a solid young man. Jess shut the book. 'Family business,' he said. 'Nothing.'
Thomas sat down across from him, on an old divan that wasn't meant to hold someone of his size; it creaked alarmingly, and the ornamental legs bowed, but he didn't seem to notice. Glain, who was sitting on the other end, got up to ease the load on the furniture, with a typically grim scowl at the both of them. She went to the water jug in the corner of the common room and then found another seat far away. Apart from Glain and a rowdy group playing dice in the corner, they were almost alone. It was far later than any of them should have been awake.
'My family messages don't make me so grim in the face,' Thomas said. 'Is it bad news?'
Jess shrugged and forced a smile. 'It's always bad in my family. Can you think of a book that has the phrase in it worth to the world?'
'No, why?'
In truth, Jess couldn't; he didn't dare. He shrugged. 'Not important. I just heard it somewhere, and it sounded familiar.'
'It's from one of the Lost Books,' Glain said, which was unexpected; he didn't think she was even listening. 'A play by Aristophanes burnt in the sack of Rayy
. I thought you were supposed to be the expert, Brightwell.'
'Not tonight, apparently,' he said. 'Thanks.' He was genuinely grateful. His father wanted him to find a lost book by Aristophanes, urgently, and deliver it to the shadow market contacts. A book that was somewhere in Alexandria.
Somewhere in Alexandria wasn't a reasonable area to search.
Jess yawned, stretched, and closed his Codex. Thomas, who'd put his head back against the divan's cushions, cracked a blurry eye and said, 'Off to bed?'
'Yeah, dawn's coming fast, and Wolfe has no mercy,' Jess said. 'Gute Nacht.'
'Your accent is still terrible, you know.'
'You taught me.'
Jess didn't go to bed. He slipped up the stairs to the second floor, which was now mostly deserted, thanks to the early departure of some of their classmates. He took the route he'd scouted earlier through the back corner window of a little-used storage room. From there, it was a short drop to a ledge, then down to the alley behind Ptolemy House. Even this late, the streets were still busy, and he'd been out enough to know his way.
It took most of the night to find a shadow market 'cousin' who knew the book in question and who in town possessed a copy: he found it was in the collection of a man named Abdul Nejem. Nejem, he was told, wouldn't sell it; it was the prize jewel of his treasure chest of books.
It didn't matter, because Jess didn't have the funds to buy it in any case. His father had only instructed him to get it.
So he stole it.
It was an easy enough job, though it was near dawn when Jess delivered the Aristophanes scroll back to his market contact ... but the cousin-in-crime who'd been waiting to receive the book was gone, and someone new waited in the darkness.
That was almost never a good sign, new faces. Jess stopped and took a step back, getting ready to run.
The figure stepped into the light with a tight, guarded smile on his face. 'Hello, brother,' Brendan said. 'See you haven't lost your touch. That's good. Thought this place might make you turn honest.'
He stepped forward and pulled Jess into a hard embrace. Hard to admit how good that felt, to see family. 'I'm as honest as I'll ever get,' Jess said. 'Which will do fine, thanks. What are you doing here?'
'Came for that,' Brendan said, and gestured to the ornate scroll case in Jess's hand. 'Aristophanes, right? Never cared for him, but I don't care about personal taste when hard currency's involved. Any problems getting hold of it?'
'Brendan ...' Jess took a deep breath and shook his head. 'What are you doing here? In Alexandria?'
'Told you already. Were you followed?'
'No, I'm not an amateur, and answer the bloody question!'
'Da wanted it in the safest possible hands,' his brother said, 'which happen to be mine, of course. It's a trip to the buyer, he didn't want it entrusted to anyone else along the way. Including our cousins.'
The idea of Brendan strolling bold as brass into Alexandria and smuggling out a book made Jess feel sick to his stomach. Physically ill. 'It's not simple death by hanging here, brother. They've got a long, inventive tradition of finding ways to make people die in pain. Let the others take the risk, that's what Da pays them for!'
'Da's orders were for me to do it personally,' Brendan said. 'I know what I'm getting into, ta for caring.'
'I--' I do care, Jess wanted to say, and it was true, but he knew neither one of them felt comfortable with having that said aloud. 'If you're caught, I'm in it, too. You know that. Same face.'
Brendan's smile had teeth now. 'Well, can't have my brutal torture and death get you failed out of your class, can we? Stop worrying, brother. I'll be fine. Best get back to your school before you're missed.'
'Brendan--'
'At least you've learnt not to call me Scraps. Thought I'd have to beat that out of you, one day.' The smile faded, and his brother looked like half a stranger now. Someone he loved, but someone he wasn't sure he could ever really trust. 'I'll give Father your love.'
There was just enough sarcasm in it to sting, and then Brendan was gone through a hidden door at the back of the empty shop, and Jess was left alone to hope that the next time he saw his twin, Brendan wasn't dying. Or dead.
He made it to Ptolemy House just as the bells clanged, summoning them to another day with Scholar Wolfe.
'You look terrible,' Thomas said, as Jess went straight for the common room, and coffee. 'Bad night?'
That was, Jess thought, putting it mildly.
The Aristophanes book was valuable, but sending Brendan was stupid. Reckless. He wondered what his father was thinking ... and then he wondered if it had really been his father's idea at all.
'This is impossible!' Izumi burst out the next morning, when their Codexes all flashed and chimed in unison, and Jess opened it to find instructions from Wolfe. 'We get so little sleep, he asks so much, and for what? Now this?'
'What?' Jess asked her. 'Mine says report to the classroom. What's yours?'
Her mouth was set in a grim straight line. 'He wants me to report to the Medica headquarters. I'm to receive special half-day training on top of classroom study.'
Jess looked around at those in the common room. 'Anyone else?' About half the class raised hands, including Thomas. 'Where are you off to, then?'
'Artifex,' he said. He was trying not to seem happy, but as usual with Thomas, he couldn't conceal it. 'I am to study the making of blueprints.'
The rest were similar; it was apparent that Wolfe had identified specific traits in them he felt needed cultivation. Khalila had special study with another Scholar versed in sophisticated mathematics and the study of the heavens. Dario seemed fairly content to be studying intensively in history. Glain, not surprisingly, ended up training with the High Garda.
Jess had nothing additional. It seemed ominous, as if Wolfe had simply given up on him. Jack of all trades, master of none, was another favourite saying of the Brightwell household. He'd always thought knowing many things gave him strength.
Now it made him feel vulnerable.
The day's classroom training, though, was also curiously individual. They were kept waiting in the room and told to read on the internal structure of the Library hierarchy, which Jess could already recite in his sleep, and then were taken one by one to a smaller side room where Wolfe waited. When it was Jess's turn, he felt that it was a critical moment: either he would impress Wolfe today, or he would be struck off.
He was in sixth place in the class rank, and sixth place would be impossible to hang on to without standing out in some way.
'Sit,' Wolfe said, and nodded to a simple wooden desk and chair in the middle of the room, with a box on top of the desk. 'Do you understand the theory of Translation?'
'Yes sir. It is an offshoot of mirroring, but instead of just creating a copy of a thing, you actually move the thing from one place to another.'
'Simplistic, but accurate. Part of the job of a librarian is that as you locate an original work, whether that is just a personal journal surrendered on the death of the owner, or recovered materials, it must be added to the Library's collection. I assume you understand how this happens.'
This, then, was the test. 'In theory. I've never done it.'
'You will do it now,' Wolfe said. 'Open the box.'
Jess stood up and folded back the leaves. Inside, there was a stack of volumes - twenty or more. Originals. The smell of them was hauntingly familiar. He took the first one from the stack, then looked at Wolfe, who was leaning against the wall with his arms folded.
Wolfe raised his dark eyebrows. 'Don't wait for me, postulant. You said you knew the process. Try the desk drawer.'
Jess opened the drawer, and inside found a jumble of clips. Simple things, spring-hinged, with the Library symbol embossed on a seal at the top. They looked no different than anything a clerk might use to fasten some papers. Mundane.
He took a clip and put it beside the book, but his mind went blank. I put the clip on next? Or ...
'I'm waiting, Bri
ghtwell.'
He was missing something, and it flashed into his mind in the same second. He removed his Codex from his pocket and put it on the desk, opened it, and ... again, hesitated. Was it the clip first? Or Codex? Or ... Stop thinking so much, Jess told himself. You know the steps, Wolfe's quizzed you on it enough. Just do it.
He picked up the clip and slid it carefully down onto the front cover of the book, then opened the book to the interior to find the title. Once he had that, he checked the Codex. The title was already listed. He picked the book up and tapped the seal on the clip to his postulant's bracelet, and a dim light woke inside the seal. It started to glow.
'You may want to sit back,' Wolfe said. Jess did. He was still holding the book, watching the glow brighten. There was a feeling inside his head, a kind of strange light static. 'You may also want to place the book on the table, unless you want to lose a hand.'
Jess quickly put it down. The glow brightened, and brightened ... and then flashed red. He felt a suction of air, a strange pop that sounded more in his head than in the room, and the desk was bare.
The book was gone.
'Congratulations,' Wolfe said. 'You have successfully sent a book to Archive. Now do it again. Faster.'
He did. This time, he didn't hesitate. It was a smooth process: clip, Codex, desk, pop, gone.
Wolfe said nothing. Jess reached back in the box and did three more in quick succession, one after another. The last title wasn't in the Codex, so he took the time to take out his stylus and carefully enter the title and author on an empty page before sending it on.
'Stop,' Wolfe said, when Jess reached for yet another book in the box. He was frowning. 'I think that's enough.'
'Thank you, sir,' he said, and stood up. He felt strangely dizzy for a moment, but braced himself and got his balance. His stomach growled.
'What you feel now is the energy the Obscurist's alchemical transfer takes from you. The tags work on the same principle as the Codex; they exist both here and in the Archive, and through manipulation of the essence of the object, an Obscurist's process can physically move it from one place to another. You're simply providing fuel.' Wolfe continued to study him with an intensity Jess found unnerving.
'Am I dismissed, sir?'
'Yes,' Wolfe said. 'Send in Danton next. No discussion of this with anyone.'