"Because you were in there," Tom said. "You met them. We wanted to know. Were they all--"
"Fanatics?" Jess looked up then and met Troll's eyes. His squad leader didn't flinch. "I don't know. Does it matter? I didn't sit down and have long, meaningful conversations with them. I was busy trying to figure out a way out. Why?"
Wu said, "Because we were in charge of loading ballistae. We need to know--"
That trailed off into silence. Jess couldn't think of anything to say to that, to the painful quiet between them, and finally, shook his head. "I don't have an answer to that question. You did what you had to do. We all did. We have to accept what we can't change."
There was a short silence, and then Tom offered his hand. No change in expression. Jess looked at it for a second, then took it and let Troll help him up. "Glad you're alive," Tom said. It wasn't a warm welcome, but it was something. "Glain said to tell you they're in the command tent, when you're ready to join them."
"I'm going to find Morgan first."
"She's in the Medica tent, but you'd best go to Glain first. Morgan's asleep, and you'll want to stay with her."
Jess leaned closer and said, "I thought you came to kick my skull in."
"Honestly?" Tom said. "Hadn't decided." He suddenly dragged Jess in and clapped him on the back, which hurt intensely, but Jess managed not to wince. Much. "You have a spot with us, Blue Dog. Always."
Tom's advice was sound; Jess knew that once he saw Morgan, he'd want to stay with her. So he went to the command tent and found Khalila and Dario arguing.
Or rather, Dario was arguing and Khalila was ignoring him when Jess pushed open the flap of the command tent, and all of that skidded to a halt as Khalila rushed to Jess and examined him with intense, toe-to-head scrutiny. "Does it hurt?" she asked. Under stress, her accent grew stronger. "The burns?"
"Not as much as it ought," he said. He was out of breath and, yes, aching all over, but determined not to show it.
"Good." She embraced him then. Gently. When she drew back, he saw his damp hair had left little dark patches on the sky blue cloth of her hijab. Her eyes were very bright with tears, but she blinked them away. "We made Thomas go back to bed. He looked terrible, and he was coughing constantly."
Which, of course, made Jess's throat tickle uncomfortably. When he swallowed, he could still taste bittersweet ashes. Imaginary, most likely, but very real to him. He blinked and saw a flash of green flames, falling buildings, screaming faces trapped and helpless. Pressure formed in his chest, dangerous and sickening, and he felt a terrible urge to run. But there was no running away from what he'd left behind. It would be with him, always. And he had to learn to stand it.
"Are you all right?" she asked him quietly, and he nodded. "When you didn't follow us through at first, I was so afraid--but you came through; of course you did. I knew we couldn't lose you. You, of all of us, are a survivor."
She underestimated herself, he thought, and almost said it, but he knew she wouldn't like to have it pointed out. He and Khalila sat down on camp chairs a little distance away from the others in the tent, with the whispering, billowing fabric at their backs. Dario watched, arms folded, but didn't try to join them; Jess was dimly glad of that.
Khalila looked exactly right once again, perfectly elegant in a long dress of thick, nubby silk that some other Muslim woman in the High Garda must have unearthed from a chest. She had the matching head scarf, and a full, black Scholar's robe over the dress. The only jarring detail was her hands--treated with a Medica's skill, but still showing signs of burns. She'd cleaned her nails with scrupulous care, but the rest gave her away.
Jess nodded at them, where they were folded in her lap. "What happened there?"
Khalila looked as if she had the impulse to hide her hands in the folds of her gown, but she didn't. She looked down to consider the scratched, burned fingers, and then said, "After you collapsed, there was--there was another young man, alone. A survivor. He crawled out the gap. He was--he was on fire."
Jess's whole body registered the meaning of that in a horrific rush. "You pulled him out."
She nodded. Her eyes were dark and distant, and he hoped never to see that look in her again. "Dario and I, yes. We tried to--to help him. But he died." She smiled, but it looked forced, and painful. "We had to try." The smile faded, and her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Oh, Jess. There were so many--so many--"
"I know," he said, and held her hand while she wept almost silently, but painfully. He had the same grief, but it seemed to be trapped behind a wall, seething and angry and bitter, and he didn't know how to let it out.
But he was glad she did.
Dario had turned his head away, but Jess couldn't miss the stiff line of his shoulders. He wanted to be the one Khalila turned to. And most of the time, Jess thought, he would get his wish. But not now.
The storm passed within half a minute, and she carefully dried her eyes and gave Jess a small, apologetic smile as she pulled away. When she started to speak, he shook his head. "No apologies," he said. "Not for being more human than the rest of us."
"We all deal with things in our own way," Scholar Wolfe said as he took a seat on Jess's other side. "No shame in any of it. Even despair." He almost sounded . . . kind. Surely that couldn't be right.
Jess preferred a safe, solid world where Scholar Wolfe didn't have a kind bone in his body, and to preserve that, he moved back to watching Santi and Zara, who stood together at a long table, with maps.
Zara reached down and took a book from her pack. She opened it and flipped pages, and as Jess watched, she picked up a stylus and wrote in it.
A Codex. She's writing in a Codex? He felt a chill, then a rush of heat, and fear. Easy for Zara to betray them doing that, and when he stood up, he meant to put a stop to it. But Wolfe grabbed his sleeve and said, "Sit down before you fall, boy. You look wretched and you shouldn't be upright."
"I heard the captain wanted me to come here, and why are they writing in a Codex?"
"Because it's important that Zara be seen as a loyal High Garda commander. Misdirection. Confusion. If we can't take the company with us, we have to protect them from suspicion. That means creating false reports and trails." Wolfe watched the two of them silently for a few seconds, and Jess had the feeling that he, too, was uncomfortable with the closeness between Santi and his lieutenant. Not quite jealousy, Jess thought, but there was a wariness to the way Wolfe held himself. Still, his voice sounded confident. "Zara is meticulously documenting everything that she should, including the receipt of sealed secret orders from the Artifex."
"Are there sealed secret orders from the Artifex?"
"No. But if we can sow a little distrust between the Archivist and his chief lackey, all the better. The other two commanders who've pledged to us will also be recording receipt of the same orders, and noting that they've been instructed to burn them on receipt, so there'll be no copies or records to disprove it. That's bound to cause conflict and confusion." Wolfe glanced at him. "What would you give to see that another city never dies like that again?"
It was the question he'd been asking himself so relentlessly. And he had his answer ready. "Everything."
"Your life?"
"Yes."
Wolfe sighed. "So say we all, then. Are you with us? To fight?"
"Of course I am," Jess said. "Did you really doubt it?"
"I didn't," Santi said from the table. "Dario's decision rather surprised me, though."
Dario made a mock bow. "Happy to fail that test, Captain. But I've never really been afraid to die for a good cause."
Santi brushed that aside. "Dying is the easy part," he said. "Fanatics do it every day. I need to know--we need to know--if you'll be ready to fight without the rest of us. You have to be ready to win. Not just die in a blaze of glory. Sometimes, what you have to do might not be glorious. Just dirty, and necessary."
One by one, they nodded. But of all of them, Jess thought, he was the only one who clearly, fully understood what that m
ight really mean.
EPHEMERA
Text of a letter from High Garda Captain Wellington, found on his body in the field near Philadelphia, sent to the attention of the Archivist Magister by Acting Captain Zara Cole. Burned upon receipt.
It is with great sadness and loathing that I report to you the total victory of High Garda forces at Philadelphia.
Hardly a stone remains fixed to another, and in walking that wretched hell, I have seen not one living thing . . . not bird, dog, blade of grass, or human. What I have seen are carpets of bones, mounds of them from victims huddled together for protection that never came.
Damn you. Damn you for forcing us to be your murderers. May the gods curse you forever.
Text of a report from High Garda Acting Captain Zara Cole, in the field near Philadelphia, sent to the attention of the Commander of the High Garda. Available on the Codex.
It is with deep regret that I inform you of the death of High Garda Captain Wellington, who served the Great Library with selfless devotion for more than thirty years. His death came at his own hand, out of despair and overwhelming grief for what has been done in the name of the power we all serve so faithfully. May the gods have mercy on us all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Morgan lay perfectly still. Her color was like porcelain, drained of all the warmth and vitality Jess loved in her.
She looked like a dead girl waiting for her coffin.
Dr. Askuwheteau was busy checking a supply of Medica vials and compounds in a brand-new case, but when he saw Jess standing in the tent doorway, frozen, he said, "Come in, close the flap. We need to keep her warm."
It was, Jess thought, suffocatingly hot in the tent already, and they'd layered blankets on Morgan's motionless body as well. "Has she been awake?" he asked. Askuwheteau shook his head silently. "Not at all?"
"I don't want her awake just now," he said. "This is necessary. An Obscurist who uses power too wildly . . . Well, you saw the fields in Philadelphia. She couldn't control the scope of what she did. She had to stop before it was too late. She was coming to pieces when she came out of that hell. She'll hurt herself, or someone else, if she doesn't allow herself to heal."
There was something in the phrasing of that, and Jess put the pieces together almost instantly. "You did this. You've drugged her."
The doctor shrugged. "For her protection. And ours. She would say the same."
"How long do you intend to keep her out?"
"A day, maybe two," Askuwheteau said. "I was trained for this, Mr. Brightwell, back when the Library thought me worth saving. Even the Iron Tower needs Medica. As someone with a trace of the talent, they thought I was . . . worthy." He drenched that word in a rich sauce of irony. "The treatment is sound. Certain specific compounds to help her quintessence heal properly. Certain others to keep her conscious mind from interfering with that process."
"But she'll come out of it fine," Jess said. He made it a statement. The doctor said nothing either for or against it. "She'll be all right." The silence stretched on. "This is where you agree with me."
Askuwheteau dragged a chair over and put it beside Morgan's bed. "Sit," he said, "before you fall. I can hear the state of your lungs from here. You realize that breathing in the vapors ruptures the lining of the lungs?"
"Stop avoiding the question." Jess realized his voice had grown edges, despite the faint wheeze in it. "We saved your life!"
"And I've saved hers," Askuwheteau snapped back. "If I hadn't kept her in this coma, she'd insist on trying to help you and your big friend."
"Did--" Jess didn't want to ask, but he forced himself. "Did anyone else make it out?"
"None that lived," the doctor said. His voice sounded tight and angry, but his eyes were flat and distant. Unfeeling. "There's only so much to be done, by doctor or Medica or even Obscurist. Greek fire takes most who are touched by it even in passing." He finished his inventory of the bag and snapped it closed. "They tell me we will be leaving just after dark. Your party and mine. I've asked for us to travel with you for a while, and then we will leave on our own for Boston, where we have tribal relations who will take us in."
"I thought--I thought you'd stay with the Medica."
"Why? So I can treat the soldiers who destroyed my people?" Askuwheteau looked down at the coat he wore, with the Library's symbol on it. "It's like wearing someone else's skin."
Jess understood that. He didn't quite know how to reconcile himself to wearing a Library uniform now, either. He remembered the blank silence of Troll and his soldiers in the shower tent, the quiet suffering in their eyes.
Maybe none of them knew how to do that anymore.
"Can I stay with her awhile?" Jess asked, and took Morgan's cold, entirely limp hand in his scarred, burned one.
"Please yourself," Askuwheteau said. "I need to go sit with my people and offer prayers for my friends."
Then he was off, long strides, his long black braid bouncing against the new Medica robe he wore. He'd abandoned his battered old hat. He now looked like any Medica professional, though one badly in need of solid meals. He didn't fit here. Maybe he didn't fit anywhere.
He will, though. We all find our place, Jess thought, and brushed his thumb across Morgan's knuckles. And if we can't find one, we make one. We find our way through what's done to us, and come out the other side.
We heal.
He raised her limp fingers to his lips and whispered, "Please come back."
Three hours passed, and Jess watched the color of the light washing the west side of the tent. It had gone from pale gold to the color of honey to a rich orange, and then dark. He could almost pretend--almost--that it was a normal day, normal sunset, that the air didn't reek of smoke and ash and death.
That the flickering, ominous glow to the west wasn't the simmering remains of a city that would take weeks to finish burning.
He hadn't been able to sleep, though he'd been very tired; he kept running things through his mind in obsessive detail, looking for the risks, the tricks. The biggest risk, he thought, was that Brendan wouldn't help him . . . But somehow, he knew that his brother would. It had been there, in the inflection of his voice, in the way he wouldn't meet Jess's eyes as he lied for their father.
Santi had asked what they would be willing to do. Jess doubted he had any idea that this would be the price of that question.
"Jess?" The whisper was soft, but it went right through him--not a sharp intrusion, but a wave of relief, and he looked down to see that Morgan's eyes were open, her dry lips parted. Her fingers tightened on his. "Jess?"
"I'm here," he said. One part of him hoped this was good, her waking this early. Askuwheteau seemed to believe that she'd sleep for the rest of the day and through the night, but the doctor was gone now, and the important thing was, she was awake. "How do you feel?"
"Tired," she whispered. Her voice was just a thread of sound, and her eyes seemed dull. "Thirsty."
He quickly poured her a cup of water and boosted her up to sip at it. Not too much. He wasn't sure what would be good for her, and there was no one to ask. "Better?"
She nodded a little, and shivered. He tucked the blankets around her, and her grip on his hand suddenly tightened. Tingled.
Burned.
"Morgan?"
He looked up, and she was staring at him with that fixed, unfocused stare he recognized as her accessing her Obscurist talents. She was still shivering; he could feel the convulsions of it through her fingers.
He suddenly felt a cough explode in his lungs, and turned aside to let it out. The coughing didn't stop. It got worse, doubling him over, and the liquid in his lungs that had been receding seemed to come out of nowhere, flooding up, suffocating, and he spat out one mouthful, two, three, each one redder than the last, and he couldn't get his breath, and Morgan's hand was holding his so tightly that he couldn't shake her loose . . .
And then Askuwheteau burst through the tent flap, took one look at them, and stepped forward to grab Morgan's arm and
twist it, breaking her hold on him. She cried out, and Jess nearly fell trying to turn to defend her, but he wasn't hurting her, she was saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and Askuwheteau, his face a grim mask, injected her with a solution of bluish liquid and held her down until she quieted again.
Once she was still, eyes closed, breathing steadily, he turned to Jess, who was still fighting to catch his breath. The dirt on the floor by his chair was soaked with liquid, and the liquid looked terribly like blood.
"What's wrong with her?"
"She's trying to heal you. That's what her instincts tell her she must do. It will kill you both if she tries just now," Askuwheteau said. He rummaged in his bag and came up with another small glass vial. He pitched it to Jess. "Drink this."
"What is it?"
"Drink it or I'll hold you down and inject you with it."
Jess tipped it up and swallowed. It tasted faintly of berries, and something bitter beneath, and he felt the constriction and pressure in his chest begin to ease. "That's not half-bad--"
The darkness was already descending when he heard the doctor say, from a great distance, "Better than the alternatives."
Waking up came with a fierce, walnut-sized headache buried deep in his skull, a surging feeling of dizziness, and . . . no cough. Jess took in two or three breaths before he recognized that he was breathing easily and normally again. His memory seemed cheerily out of focus, and it took time for it all to trickle back to him . . . Philadelphia, burning. Morgan, coming awake, and the burning tingle in his hand where she gripped it. The helpless coughing fit.
Askuwheteau's potion. Bloody man tricked me. But he had to admit, though his chest and throat still ached a bit, he felt much better. Except for the headache, and even that was starting to slowly unwind and vanish as he opened his eyes and sat up.
Well, tried to. He couldn't. He was tied down. The most he could do was lift his head, and he did, straining to see, but it was very dark. He was in some kind of room, and it smelled of oil, metal, sweat. A hint of blood. The ground under him shuddered and rattled, and as he jerked against the restraints, he heard someone in the shadows say, "Sleeping Beauty's up. Might want to cut him loose before he bruises." Dario's voice, dryly amused.