by Rachel Caine
“Not necessarily,” Thomas said. “Heron was a master at designing mechanisms meant to stand the test of time. He was known to plate certain components with platinum and palladium to combat rust.” He sat back and sighed, rubbing his neck. He looked thinner than she remembered, and more . . . honed, somehow, like a particularly keen knife. Then he smiled at her in that shy, distracted way he had, and it all melted away. He was Thomas. Still. “You’re tired.” He didn’t make it a question.
Morgan gave him a weary smile. “Well, not all of us have the constitution of an ox and the brain of Heron himself, so . . . yes. I’m tired.”
“I wish I could leave you to rest,” he said. “But while I’m sure your Obscurist colleagues are good at their work . . .”
“They’re not powerful enough to do this? Yes, except for Eskander, and you really don’t know him. Plus you’re right: we’re friends; we can communicate better and faster. I can get a potion from the Medica to keep me alert.” She yawned and laughed at the same time. “And I need one, obviously.” Her smile faded as she looked down at the papers spread out between them. “We had to remove poisons from these papers before they could be safe to handle. Did you know that? The Archivist had the room trapped with lethal gas.”
“I heard,” Thomas said. “But they all came out alive, ja?”
“Jess was the one who got them.” Her fingertips were just touching the page, and she felt a shiver run through her. “He was almost killed doing it.”
“But only almost. And you know Jess. He cheats death almost every day, and for far less reason. Morgan? Are you worried for him?” Thomas’s voice turned warmer. More concerned. She didn’t look up. “Jess is a survivor.”
“Until he isn’t,” she said, and took a deep breath. Forced a smile. “Forgive me. I get moody when I’m tired. And worried.”
“You miss him.”
“Yes,” she said, though even as she said it, it didn’t sound assertive. “I do.”
“But?”
“But I have too much else to think about,” she said, then immediately retracted that. “No, that’s unfair. I’m wondering if he’s all right, mostly. I—I should have stayed with him, Thomas. He needs . . . someone. After losing Brendan.” If you’d really loved him, you wouldn’t have left him, some part of her said. And she had to admit that was probably true. But she did love him. The question was . . . how much? For how long? How deeply? She’d been swept away by the breathless joy of being seen, being wanted. And so had Jess, she thought. But was that enough for the rest of their lives?
If you have to ask the question, you know the answer.
“Jess isn’t alone,” Thomas replied calmly. “He’ll need comfort, but right now I think he needs structure. He has Scholar Wolfe for that. I think he is better with tasks to occupy him.”
“Men,” Morgan said. “You all hide your feelings too much.”
“That is true, but not useful to want us to change, is it? We are as we were built.”
“People aren’t automata, Thomas. They can change if they want to do so.”
“Ah, but can they change for the better? And who decides? This is why I prefer my machines. Far easier to fix a broken automaton than a broken person.” His smile felt as warm as summer sun, and for a moment she forgot they weren’t just two students, debating. But then he turned back to the paper. “Can you find me a suitable god, then?”
She knew it wasn’t what he meant, but it was still a startling question. “I’ll find one. But we shouldn’t do this exhausted. It will take a lot of effort, at least for me. And probably even for you.”
Thomas nodded, stretched, and yawned. Neither of them had slept in more than a day with the stress of what was happening, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d paused for more than a bite or two of food. Her throat was dry, despite the tea. She craved a large glass of water and her bed.
“Go,” she told him. “It’s getting late, and you and I both need the rest.”
“May I sleep in one of the empty rooms?” There were plenty of empty bedrooms in the Iron Tower where the Obscurists lived; the population within had been steadily declining for a long time. “It saves me a walk back to the office I was given. I don’t have sleeping quarters yet.”
“Of course. Annis can see to it for you. And call at the kitchens, see if they can make you food. They should have plenty.”
He placed a heavy hand on her shoulder and squeezed very, very carefully. She was grateful. Thomas’s full strength could easily crack her collarbone. “Don’t stay up brooding,” he told her. “We are doing what we can do. What we can’t do we must leave to others.”
She nodded. Thomas’s genius was legendary, but what most overlooked was the gentle care he took of his friends. Sleep would be relief, but she knew it might yet elude her no matter how much her body ached for the release. “I’ll go to bed,” she said. “Go on, Thomas. Annis is just outside. She’ll see you settled.”
When the big young man was gone, she felt cold. Alone. And although deeply tired, still agitated. Power sizzled in her veins, dark and glorious; she’d used so much in the battle at the Colosseum, and yet she felt bursting with it still. It wasn’t the same power she’d grown up feeling; that had been a steady, slow trickle from the world around her, just enough to fuel the modest efforts at elemental manipulation, cleverly rewriting Obscurist codes, concealing herself from detection. She’d spent most of her life in hiding, trying to erase her existence from the Great Library’s ever-seeing eye. But once she’d stopped hiding, once she’d used the power she was born with . . . it had changed. Grown. Darkened.
She knew how dangerous it was. Few Obscurists could reach the power that she did, drawn directly from the universal fluid, the quintessence, of the world; the few who could died young and often took others with them. Power always corrupted. It was a law of nature.
She sat back with a sigh and rubbed the sore spot on her lower back, then stood. This was a spare workroom inside the vast Iron Tower; it was little used and had a fine-ground grit on every surface. The cleaners hadn’t visited in weeks, if not months. I just made Thomas a vow that I could bind him to an automaton, she thought. And I’m not sure what will happen if I do it. She remembered what she’d done on the arena floor, and shivered. Her talents ran dark, no question of that. No. I will just have to be careful. So very careful.
She blinked and saw a shimmering afterimage. There was power in this room. Odd, hidden power. She closed her eyes and opened them slowly, searching for the source of the glimmer. It came from a flagstone in the corner. Morgan walked to it, touched the stone, and felt it move. Loose. She pried it up. Beneath lay a ring.
Not just any ring. This one was emblazoned with the seal of the Great Library, gold set into an amber stone. Just by holding her hand above it she felt the shimmer from it—not heat, but energy.
A voice from behind her said, “I hoped you’d find that when I told you to use this room.”
She looked around, startled out of her uncertainty. The Obscurist Magnus Eskander stood in the doorway. He’d avoided the formal robes of the office, unlike his unpleasant predecessor; he was dressed in a plain workman’s shirt and trousers, with boots that had seen years of use. A lean, strong elder with long, curling gray hair. Scholar Wolfe’s father. Her honorary grandfather, in a sense.
“What is it?” she asked. He closed the workroom door and approached to stare down at the ring with her.
“What do you think it is?”
He was as bad as his son; everything, even the simplest question, had to be made into a lesson. Morgan resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “A ring?”
“Come, girl, you’re not head-blind.”
“Someone stored power in it,” she said. “An accumulation from the quintessence.”
“Not quintessence. Apeiron,” he corrected. “Apeiron is a greater unification even than quin
tessence. It underlies the reality that we observe, and all other realities. But you are correct, the ring is rich in it.”
“I didn’t know it was possible to store it in a matrix like this.”
“It’s rare,” he said. “But not unknown. This particular ring was created by the Obscurist Magnus Gargi Vachaknavi over five thousand years ago. Quite old. And quite dangerous.”
“What’s it doing here?”
“I put it here,” he said. “I wanted to see if you’d find it. Which you did.”
Another test. Morgan glared at him. “I thought you didn’t want to be the Obscurist. You’re acting like one.”
“I don’t want it,” he said. “I want to be left alone. So training you to take my place seems the very best option I have to achieve that goal, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I don’t want to be the Obscurist!”
He waved that aside. “We don’t always get what we want, and for as long as Obscurists are necessary to the proper operation of the Great Library we’ll need a steady hand to guide them. We need to ensure that the automata and the Great Archives remain functional. You’re the logical choice to take the job on. I’ve reviewed every Obscurist in this tower. You are, in fact, the only choice I can see that won’t ultimately compromise the work.”
“Annis told me you didn’t give a damn for the Great Library. That you were brought here against your will and forced into service. Like me.”
“Like many of us, and the ancestors of many more,” he agreed. “But I don’t do this for the Great Library. I do it for the memory of the woman I loved, who did believe in that cause. Whether I wanted the responsibility or not, it’s landed on me. And it will land on you. Get used to the idea, Morgan. I know you’re young for it, and rash, and frustrated. But the world looks to us for this. We can only look to each other.”
“I never wanted it.”
“I know,” Eskander said. “Take the ring.”
She hesitated. “The amount of power I used before—”
“I’m aware that you’ve overreached,” he said. “Not the first time, nor I imagine will it be the last with you, though each time you burn so hot you shorten your own life. I trust you know that? The young feel immortal. But you’re not.”
Morgan took in a deep breath. “It’s more than that,” she said. “I can feel it. The power I can reach now . . . it’s not pure. If I take this ring . . .”
“We don’t know what will happen until you do,” Eskander said. “Go on.”
“What if I—”
“Take it.”
She didn’t like it. She was tired, and afraid, and sickened inside, but she stooped down and took the ring from its hidden spot. It gleamed soft gold and amber. There was a brilliant spot of red hidden in the stone, and as she turned it in her palm, it seemed to move. But that couldn’t be true; amber was a stone made from ancient fossilized resin. Nothing could flow freely inside it.
“The speck you see inside is the blood of Gargi Vachaknavi,” Eskander said. “She was the most brilliant woman of several dozen ages—famous enough that even the male-dominated courts of ancient kingdoms couldn’t deny her honors. She lives on in that stone. And you are the one to wear it now.”
“I’m not brilliant,” she said. She felt humiliated, oddly enough. Small and fearful and unworthy. “Please take it.” She held it out. He shook his head.
“You aren’t Gargi,” he agreed. “But you are something else. Something I feel certain that lady would find worthwhile to nurture. Put the ring on, Morgan.”
“No!”
He put his hands on her shoulders and gazed down at her. His son had the same look. The same hidden warmth buried under layers of severity. “Put the ring on. I’m here. I won’t abandon you.”
She felt her tired eyes fill with tears. When those tears fell, they tasted bitter. “I feel so wrong.”
“Then I will help you,” he said. “Do you trust me?”
She did. Against her will. Against all her experience. So she nodded, took another breath, and tried to put the ring on her right hand. No, that felt wrong. It belonged on her left, on her middle finger, and as it settled against her skin she felt something wash over her. Not power. Emotion. Welcome.
The power came after, a wave that crashed in on her and buried her deep, screaming silently and rolling in the ocean of gold. Drowning in the deep, rich flood of something primal and powerful.
She felt it wash her clean inside. It burned, and it hurt, but she’d felt this before; she knew to hang on and wait for the relief. And it came, oh, it came cool as water through her veins. She flinched, shuddered, and looked down at the ring on her hand.
She hadn’t imagined it. The red spot in the stone was moving. As if the honey under the surface remained liquid and sweet. She felt . . . free. Light. Strong. Strong enough to bring this entire tower down around her, to level cities, to burn out stars.
It was terrifying and wonderful.
“No one should have this power,” she whispered. “No one.” But she didn’t want to give it up, either. There was a feeling that the ring itself had decided this and not her. That the ring believed in her, if such a thing was possible.
Eskander still held her shoulders, but he was looking at her completely differently now. There was a sharp assessment in his eyes, and a light frown between his brows. He was reading her on a deeper level than just the physical.
And he finally said, “The ring will help you with what you need. Whatever that may be. But don’t underestimate it: it will judge your intentions, too. It’s intelligent, in a way; it’s also inherited Vachaknavi’s loyalty to the Great Library. That’s why this ring was put away . . . because the ring began to sharply disagree with the Obscurists Magni over the years about the course the Great Library was on. It will warn you first, then stop you, if it feels you are doing wrong.”
“What if it is wrong?”
“Then you have to change its mind,” he said. “But you can’t take it off, Morgan. It’s meant to be on your hand now. It will stay until it feels it’s time to go.”
“This isn’t—this isn’t alchemy. It’s sorcery.”
“It comes from a tradition that didn’t see the distinction between the two,” he said. “There’s nothing to fear here. Now, go to bed. Rest. And help Thomas in the morning.”
* * *
—
She intended to follow those orders, truly, but when she wandered out into the curving corridor, out to the central core with the lifting chamber that carried her to her old bedroom doorway—a bedroom that still contained things she’d left behind, full of past bad memories—she couldn’t go in. She went to the kitchens and ate a bowl of soup standing up. The woman on duty was baking bread, and the rich smell of it made Morgan’s mouth water even though her immediate hunger was sated.
Morgan took a hot roll with her up to the highest public level of the Iron Tower: the gardens. It was just as she’d last seen it, bursting with color and life. The singing of birds in the trees and the splash of fountains made something restless in her go temporarily still, and she stretched out on one of the long garden lounges, curled on her side, and finally allowed herself to sleep with the roll still clutched half-eaten in her hand.
* * *
—
I’m dreaming, Morgan thought.
She was floating in the ocean, staring up at a dark sky shot with stars. Watching comets streak across the blackness, trailing fire. She was happy.
And then she was drowning.
It felt as if a rope had been tied around her middle and a giant pulled her down. As if she was falling from a great height, the water rushing around her, her hands waving and grasping for the peaceful surface. She tried to hold her breath. Couldn’t.
But when she breathed, she received air—fresh air that smelled of flowers and earth.
Then sh
e was standing on the sandy floor of the ocean, which was also lit by a rising sun, and a young woman floated in the sea across from her with her legs crossed. She wore a bright yellow silk sari that fluttered in the water’s ripples. “That’s beautiful,” Morgan said, and the words came out as odd little bubbles that somehow made sense, though she heard no sound at all.
The young woman smiled and studied her and said nothing. Then she held out her hand, palm up, as if she was asking for something. Morgan, uncertain, extended her left hand. The other woman’s fingers closed around it, and she felt a shock like lightning striking. The water boiled and bubbled around them. The sun rose and fell, rose and fell, as if it was a toy on a string, and then it began to drift upward, and the two of them followed.
There was someone in the way.
The old Archivist looked down at them with his bitter eyes and seamed face and said, “Give me what is mine.”
Gargi—somehow, Morgan knew the young woman traveling with her was Gargi Vachaknavi, whose blood inhabited the ring—said the first and only word she would speak. “No,” she said, still smiling, and let go of Morgan’s hand. Without being asked, Morgan stretched out and touched that same hand to the Archivist’s face.
He blackened like the Philadelphia wheat. Poisoned. He turned to ashes and floated away on the tides, and Morgan looked at Gargi and said, “Was that right?”
Then Morgan realized that she, too, was rotting away. Flakes drifted off of her into the water. She cried out and reached for help, but the sun went out and then she was swimming desperately for the surface, but half of her was gone now, turned to ashes, and when she opened her mouth to scream, all that came out was a wet cloud of blood.
She woke up with a shock. Her heart hammered so fast it hurt. She slowly sat up and stared at the ring on her finger. Did that cause the dream? No, surely not. Surely the dream was only her own weariness and rage and pain coming back to haunt her while her guard was down. The ring couldn’t cause nightmares. Couldn’t communicate with her and give her orders, or warnings, or anything else. It was simply a storage device, carrying ancient energy.