by Rachel Caine
“In a Medica’s office. Immediately. You look like you’re about to drop.”
Jess saluted him with a fist over his heart. “I’ll go now, sir.”
“In a carriage,” Santi said. “That mist you breathed was no joke.”
Santi was already raising his hand, and a lieutenant—Glain Wathen, tall and assured and strong in her uniform—was running toward them. She stopped and waited, hands folded behind her back and her gaze steady on the captain. Disciplined, their friend, so disciplined she didn’t even glance at Jess. “Wathen,” Santi said. “Get a rig for Jess, and accompany him to see a Medica, then to the compound and fit him out with a proper uniform. Get him back here safe if they judge him able to serve. No detours.”
“Yes, sir.” Glain’s gaze slid toward Jess, then back again. “Will Brightwell be rejoining our company, then?”
“That depends on the needs of the day. The situation is fluid, since for the first time in recorded history the Great Library has no elected leadership. We have foreign navies in our seas, foreign armies on our borders. And if we don’t defend ourselves, we will be torn apart in the teeth of nations.” Santi paused, as if considering something he did not completely like. “Brightwell. Once you’re cleared and fitted out, find Red Ibrahim’s daughter, Anit. We’re going to need her.”
“You want to work with smugglers and criminals?”
“I don’t think we have much choice,” he said. “Can you find her?”
“I can make her find me,” Jess said. He imagined Anit’s face, and conjuring her up brought his brother’s specter. “Has someone told my father about Brendan?” It was his responsibility, but he didn’t want it. Couldn’t imagine writing that message.
“Scholar Wolfe sent a letter while you were resting,” Santi said. “He felt responsible for both of you.”
“He wasn’t, but I’ll have to thank him,” Jess said. “It’s better coming from him.” Because Da will blame me, Jess thought. He knew his father. Brendan was the heir and favorite. Jess was the spare. Of course he’ll blame me. Didn’t matter. He hardly expected an outpouring of emotion from his father, either grief or anger. It would be a silent kind of rage hidden in looks, turned backs, pointed mentions of what Brendan would have done. Da sometimes flew into a true, towering fury, but most often it was a death of a thousand shallow cuts.
So he had that to look forward to, he supposed.
Glain had waited patiently, but now she stepped forward and said, “If you’ll follow me?”
No choice, really. And he was grateful for the ride.
* * *
—
The Medica was shocked he was still alive. Until that moment, Jess hadn’t really believed he’d cheated death, but from the look on the older person’s face, he’d pulled off a miracle.
“Here,” the Medica said, and fastened some sort of mask over his face; it had a small symbol on the side, some alchemical icon that Jess didn’t recognize. But that meant it had been activated by an Obscurist. “Breathe as deeply as you can. We must cleanse what poison we can from your lungs.” Jess struggled to breathe in whatever it was the mask emitted; the gas smelled faintly bitter, but it burned hot going down. He obliged by taking it in as much as he could before coughs racked him, forcing it out; with it came another explosion of foam, and the Medica swiped it from his mouth and into a jar, for later study, he supposed. “Keep at it,” the man told him. “You’ll need an hour of that before you feel able to continue, but you can’t exert yourself.”
Jess pulled down the mask to say, “You do know we’re in the middle of revolution, don’t you?”
“I don’t care. That doesn’t change your situation.”
“And what is my situation?” Jess coughed, and it became almost uncontrollable; he curled in on himself, fighting to breathe, and the Medica gave him some injection. He felt the burn of it but was too desperate for air to flinch. Whatever it was, it worked. His throat and lungs relaxed, and he was able to breathe in and out again. Almost as easily as before. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” the man said. He looked grave. “The shot will keep you going for a while, but it will wear off. The treatment mask will help to a certain extent, but the more you rely on it, the less effective it will become. Take it easy for the next few days. If you don’t, the consequences will be fatal.”
“You’re joking,” Jess said. The Medica said nothing. “You’re not joking.”
“You’re lucky to be alive at all. I’ll be honest: I have no guess as to whether or not you will recover. If you do, I have no idea of how impaired you might be in the long run. Nasty stuff you breathed in. Most would have died in minutes.”
“Lucky me,” Jess said. He felt numb inside. He’d hurt himself before, of course; he’d been injured so badly that he thought he might die. But there was a large difference between a shot or stab wound that could heal and the thought of not being able to breathe. That was a horror he’d never really imagined. Like half drowning every minute. He’d never been afraid of injuries.
He was afraid of this.
The Medica left him to it, and he dutifully breathed, coughed, breathed more. After half an hour breathing came easier and hurt less. After an hour, he felt almost himself. Almost. He took the portable mask the Medica thrust at him when it was time to go, and promised to use it and return for more treatments and a better analysis of his progress.
Glain had waited. Jess wasn’t surprised by that, or by how impatient she was. The last thing she’d wanted, he imagined, was to be his sheepdog. She could have been doing important things, he supposed. Instead, she was wasting time looking after him.
He wanted to tell her. But that seemed worse than just brooding over it on his own. Glain didn’t have much patience with vulnerabilities. “Sorry,” he told her as they left the Medica’s station and took another steam carriage on to the High Garda compound. “I know this is shit duty.”
“Oh, it is,” she agreed, and gave him a look he couldn’t quite interpret. “What did you do to yourself, Brightwell?”
“It’s Brightwell again? I thought we’d made progress, Glain.”
“You’re my subordinate now. So it’s back to Brightwell. And that’s Lieutenant Wathen, to you.”
“Lieutenant!”
She shrugged. “Field appointment. I’m sure I’ll go down in rank as soon as the crisis is over.”
He doubted that. Glain was among the very few people he’d met who were born to be soldiers and who accepted the hardships and responsibilities with ease. “Congratulations.”
She nodded. “Back to my question. What happened?”
He told her. She listened intently, asked him about the mist with the analytical interest of someone whose business is in weapons, and he answered as best he could. She considered the matter for a few moments in silence, then said, “I know poisonous gases were among the inventions suppressed in the Black Archives. Some attacked the nerves; some killed almost instantly. Some smothered. It sounds like you encountered that last type. You were lucky to survive.”
“I was lucky Wolfe and Dario were there to save me,” he said. “I’d given up. I couldn’t have made it without them.” When he said it, he realized it was true. He owed both of them his life, such as it was at the moment.
It made him feel weak, and he hated it.
He turned his head toward Glain and fixed her with a look. “You seem to know a lot about it. Was that in one of the books we saved from the Black Archives?”
“It was in the Black Archives,” she said. “But I left it behind. I thought it was better left undiscovered by anyone else. It must have burned in the fire.”
“Good,” he said. “Maybe the Archivists were right: some knowledge is too dangerous to be spread.”
“Heretic.”
“You’re the one who chose not to rescue it.”
She sighed. “Yes. But let’s keep that between us, shall we?”
* * *
—
Going back into the High Garda compound felt like falling back in time for Jess. It hadn’t been so very long since he’d first entered these gates and become a soldier, but he’d been a different person then. Grieving Thomas, then intent on rescuing him from the trap he was in. But never dreaming that his actions would start a building wave of chaos and resistance that would come to a head here in Alexandria and force the most powerful man in the world to run for his life.
Strange how things had gotten so wildly out of his control, when all he’d meant to do was help a friend.
This place still felt oddly like home, though he hadn’t spent much time in it. Jess stared at the gleaming Spartan automaton as they passed it; the statue’s head turned to track and identify them, then went back to never-ending guard duty.
They walked slowly, out of deference for Jess’s lungs; he felt impatient with himself, but he could not afford to push. He needed to remember that and not feel that he was holding Glain back.
But he was holding her back. He could sense it in the tension in her body, like a tiger poised to run. He tried walking faster. It woke an ache in his lungs almost instantly, and he felt abused tissues start to swell.
He slowed down.
Glain sent him a look. “All right, then?”
He nodded and didn’t try to explain.
The entire High Garda barracks was mostly deserted now, all the clean and gleaming halls echoing with their footsteps. For the first time, Jess wondered what had been done with his room. He pointed toward the door. “Is my stuff still there?” Not that he’d had much. Growing up as he had meant being ready to abandon everything when the law came to call.
“Sorry. Your room was reassigned to another soldier. Your possessions were boxed up and sent back to your father. We’ll kit you out of general stores.”
“I liked that room,” he said. “Good light.”
“Are you going to stay a soldier? After this?” she asked him. Perfectly reasonable question, and one he honestly didn’t know how to answer. When he hesitated, she turned her head toward him. There was real gravity to her stare. She must have learned it from Santi. “If you have to think about your answer, it isn’t for you. You realize that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do. But what else will I be, if not that?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Something useful.”
“Jess. Your life doesn’t have to be just useful,” Glain said. “It’s all right to have goals for yourself. Things you want.”
Jess started to fire back that he always followed his heart . . . but that wasn’t really true. He’d grown up knowing there were expectations of him, and he’d followed those as best he could. Rebelled when he couldn’t. But all his life, he’d been reacting to something: his father. His brother. Wolfe. The Great Library itself.
But who was he—really? He had skills, but he knew he lacked real purpose. Glain had a clear vision of who she intended to be. So did Thomas. Khalila. Even Dario, in his way.
I’m more like Morgan, he thought. She’s exerted every effort to avoid her destiny. And so have I.
“You should look into being a counselor,” he said.
“Fuck off, Brightwell.”
They’d arrived at a plain double set of doors with old Egyptian hieroglyphs inset with gold above the door and a Greek translation beneath. General stores. Glain pushed the doors open, and they entered one of the most intimidatingly vast warehouses that Jess had ever seen: racks that stretched three stories up, everything perfectly aligned and orderly. Crates and boxes neatly labeled. Clothing in crisply folded stacks. Glain didn’t pause; she headed straight for a shelf that held battle uniforms and checked through them until she found what she wanted. She pulled out a protective vest, underwear, jacket, trousers, socks, boots, and weapons belt and unlocked the weapons cabinet at the back of the room to draw out a High Garda rifle and sheathed knife. She passed it all to him and pointed to a bench at the back.
“How do you know my sizes?” he asked her.
“Brightwell, I’m your lieutenant now. I know everything.”
He caught the slight gleam in her eye, and a quirk of a smile tugging the corners of her lips. He gave her a full grin, which was hardly protocol, and as he turned away she planted a boot sole in his rear to speed him on his way. She, at least, wasn’t going to treat him as damaged goods.
He dressed quickly, feeling exposed and cold in the cavernous space. Glain was, of course, right on the sizes, even down to the boots, which fit like custom-made. He checked himself in the full-length mirror, and the reflection startled him for a second.
Brendan stared back. And then it was just him, pale and unwell, an ordinary soldier in a well-fitting uniform with the Great Library’s sigil gleaming on the collars and cuffs.
He fastened the weapons belt and eased the sidearm he already had into the holster. Extra charges on the weapons belt. He counted them out of reflex; the full ten. Exactly as expected.
“Stop admiring yourself and get a move on,” Glain said. “Unless you want me to leave you here.”
He couldn’t tell if she meant that or only wanted to motivate him. With Glain it was very difficult to tell. She’d grown into a tall and fiercely handsome young woman in the last few months; when he’d first met her she’d been awkward and uncomfortable in her body, but one thing had never wavered: her commitment to the High Garda. The perfect soldier, Glain was. And he knew he’d never match that.
But it was a fine thing to see, really.
He came back to her, and she gave him a critical once-over. “Stand up straight,” Glain said. “When you wear that uniform, you don’t slouch, Brightwell.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” he said, and saluted her. It wasn’t mocking. He tried to do it well, and it must have been acceptable because she gave him a nod in turn. But then she stopped and met his gaze.
“I suppose I should say this. I’m sorry about Brendan,” she said. “I didn’t like him, but I know you loved him. Don’t take any guilt for his death. Fact is, I doubt he’d have taken any for you.”
He wanted to defend Brendan, but she was right; his brother usually cut his losses as soon as things turned against him, and Brendan had been pragmatic in a way that Jess knew he could never manage. And so he said, “Thanks. That must have hurt.”
“You have no idea,” Glain replied. “Tell anyone I showed you the slightest sympathy and I’ll pull your liver out through your throat.”
“Love you back,” he said, low enough that she could ignore it if she was so inclined. She paused as she walked away and didn’t quite turn.
“Glad to have you still with us,” she said, just as quietly. “Let’s go.”
Jess settled the rifle sling around his chest and followed his lieutenant.
A roving patrol stopped them on the way out of the High Garda compound and checked their Great Library wristbands. Security was necessarily tight; Jess grabbed the sergeant in charge of the detail and said, “Post a guard on the stores. Pay special attention to anyone taking extra uniforms.” Glain had used her badge to unlock the weapons cabinets, but uniforms weren’t considered as secure.
The sergeant frowned at him, then nodded. He understood well enough what Jess meant; they had enough problems without potential saboteurs wearing High Garda uniforms and gaining access to easy targets.
Like the Archives, Jess thought, and felt a chill. He caught up with Glain. “Lieutenant,” he said. “The Archives—”
“Yes,” Glain said. “I was told there’s already a plan in motion to secure the Great Archives. It’s an easy target for Burners, as well as other enemies. We have to watch for anything. Don’t worry, Commander Santi has it under control.”
“Does he?” he ask
ed. “I’ve met the old Archivist. I guarantee you that he’d burn the Great Archives to the ground himself rather than lose his power. And we know he must have loyalists still working for him. Until we get him, nothing’s safe.”
“I’ll send word.”
“Promise?”
“Yes,” she said, and he believed her, though clearly she didn’t put much stock in the idea that anyone who’d lived their life in the Great Library could contemplate the unthinkable: destroying books. Even though she’d been there when the Black Archives had been obliterated, she still didn’t comprehend that heresy.
He could. The Archivist was the kind of man who’d murder his family rather than be rejected by them. And he’d destroy the heart of the Great Library for spite if he thought he might lose.
“All right. Then we move on to the next thing. Finding Anit.”
She sent him a skeptical, analytical look. “Are you certain you’re up to it?”
“Asking questions? It isn’t hard labor.”
“You’re pale,” she said. “And frankly, you look like you might drop in a strong breeze.”
He hurt; he couldn’t deny it. And he wanted badly to declare himself too weak to continue. But today wasn’t a day for coddling himself, and he shook his head. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “The Medica gave me a mask to use to treat my lungs. I’ll rest when this is done. Anit’s got eyes and ears everywhere in the city. If anyone can help us root out the Archivist and his allies, she can.”
“If she will.”
“She will.”
“Why?” Glain asked. “I’d think chaos among her enemies would be to her benefit.” Anit’s trade was the stealing, copying, and smuggling of books. And, yes, this did offer her opportunities, rare ones, but she needed a calm, orderly city to do her business well.
“Anit’s practical,” he said, and shrugged. “She’ll help us because she knows we’re better than the old administration. And she can earn some grace and favors.”