by Rachel Caine
There was a large tent set up in the far corner of the room, and the concentration of guards grew higher as they approached it; Zara was stopped at the outer perimeter and told to wait by a cold-eyed High Garda captain who clearly did not trust her as much as she expected. Interesting. Thomas was searched so thoroughly they took away the nub of a pencil in his coat pocket, a bag of birdseed he kept there for pigeons, and a half-eaten wrap of cheese. “You missed the knife,” he said, and enjoyed the doubt on the face of the soldier.
The soldier wasn’t amused. “Strip,” he said. “Down to skin.” Thomas shrugged and lifted his manacled hands. The guard turned to Zara. “Unlock him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “He doesn’t have a knife. He’s been searched three times.”
“I’m not letting him in to see the Archivist without making sure. You can afford to be careless. I can’t.” There was something unspoken hanging in the air. They don’t like her, he realized. Maybe because she’d been elevated to their company by the Archivist’s decree. Maybe because they knew she’d betrayed her own once before.
“I said—” Zara’s voice had gone cold and sharp as a frozen blade, but she was stopped when the tent’s flap pushed back, and the Archivist—former, Thomas reminded himself—stepped out.
“Let them in,” he said. “Schreiber won’t kill me. It’s not in his nature.”
He doesn’t know me very well, Thomas thought. That was useful.
The Archivist wore a golden robe, but it was simple, not ceremonial; maybe he hadn’t had time to loot the Great Library’s treasures during his escape. He seemed older than Thomas remembered. And less well kept. Unbrushed, tangled, oily hair. Deep, dark bags beneath his eyes, and weariness cut so deep into his face the lines looked like wounds. He hadn’t slept easy, if at all. He is an old man, Thomas thought. Fragile. I never thought of him that way before.
The soldier didn’t like it, but he stepped aside and let Zara take her prisoner into the tent. There were, of course, more guards within, standing silently at the four corners, but these were automata. Spartans, with shields and spears and expressionless metallic faces beneath their helmets. They all turned toward him, eyes kindling red.
“If you’ve actually got a weapon concealed on your person, Schreiber, you have seconds to say so,” the Archivist said as he walked to a small folding desk. It had an equally plain folding chair behind it. Hardly the opulence to which he was accustomed, Thomas thought. “Unless you’d like your little joke to be your epitaph.”
“I’m unarmed,” Thomas said. That didn’t change the red eyes, or the focus the Spartans kept on him. Perhaps they could smell his rage. He felt it hissing in his veins like venom. “I don’t need a weapon to kill you, if I wanted to do that. And certainly she couldn’t stop me.”
“Couldn’t I?” Zara pressed a knife to his back, just above his kidneys. “I think I could. But you’re too smart to try.”
He was. But all his thinking, analyzing, observing . . . it was all to control his anger. I have engineered my rage, he thought. Focused in, like the Ray of Apollo, to turn it lethal and beautiful. And one day, this tired old man would know that.
But not when there was no way to survive it. I’m needed, Thomas thought. If he didn’t get back to his duties, if the Ray of Apollo failed in the Lighthouse . . . that would be the beginning of the end. He hated to think of himself as indispensable; there were many competent engineers, designers, mechanics. But he was the one with the vision, and that had to be preserved through this crisis. After that, he would be relieved to be just another engineer. Just another Scholar.
He fixed the old man with a stare and said, “What do you want from me?”
The Archivist restlessly moved a pile of loose papers from one corner to the other, as if it irritated him merely by existing in his presence. “I started out like you, bright and overly optimistic about the world. I thought knowledge could solve every problem, heal every wound. But we flawed, foolish humans have to decide how to use knowledge, and we rarely choose for the better. There is no absolute good. No absolute evil. Every cure can also kill.”
“So killing you will not be evil,” Thomas said. “That’s good. I was not worried, but—”
“I’m trying to explain to you how we got to this point. Don’t be impertinent.”
“Oh, I understand,” Thomas said. “I made a weapon that can kill thousands in the blink of an eye. I installed it in the Lighthouse today. I know about the dangers of excusing anything to reach a goal, but you? You took an oath to protect and distribute knowledge. Instead, you killed Scholars rather than see their work shared. You upheld a system to hide inconvenient discoveries. Everything you’ve done is to keep yourself in power. I know.”
The old man shook his head. “You understand nothing. Every year, I meet with the heads of every kingdom and country, high and low. I convince them once again to pledge their loyalty to the Great Library. What does the world look like without that, Thomas? It’s a burning wreck, fueled by madness, sectarian violence, ignorance. I save the world. Every year.”
“You make it in your own image. There’s a difference.”
“Thomas—”
“I liked it better when you were calling me by my last name. If you’re trying to convince me to help, you’re just wasting breath.”
The Archivist sat back and stared at him, and the cold glitter in his hooded eyes put Thomas on guard. “Very well. Here’s what I want from you, Schreiber: pick some locks for me. That simple. Once you’ve done it, I’ll even let you leave alive.”
“I’m not a thief.”
“Well, unfortunately, your lock-picking friend Brightwell is busy dying at the moment, so I can’t ask him. You’ll have to do.” It was a blow delivered carelessly, but intentionally, too. Thomas felt himself go tense and hot all over, and he leaned forward. He had to resist the urge to smash through that flimsy desk and grab the old man by the throat and demand answers. He also knew it was suicide.
“What happened to him?” he asked, and tried to make it sound as if he didn’t care so much it tore him apart. He thought he failed. Not Jess, no . . .
“Blame Wolfe. He dragged Jess into my office, searching for secrets. Jess breathed in Dragonfire. His time on this earth is limited.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Thomas said. He didn’t. He wasn’t involved in the making of High Garda weapons, if it was one.
“No reason you should; the formula for it burned up with the Black Archives. A demonic sort of weapon, one that rots you from within. There is no antidote, and very little chance of survival. So I suppose that is the end of the Brightwells, so far as their dynasty is concerned. Good riddance. Smugglers and book thieves deserve to be wiped from this earth.”
Thomas rocked back on his heels, feeling it like a real, physical blow in his stomach. Poison. Jess had been poisoned. And there was no cure. No, surely there must be something. Anything at all. Morgan could heal him. She would.
“Jess is no longer your concern, or mine,” the man said. “Wolfe soon won’t be, either, along with whoever he drags into his hapless efforts to kill me. He’ll be the death of more than one of your friends in the end. And accomplish nothing. By the end of today I will hold the Great Library again and impose order. I’ll have to execute all the traitors, of course. I will do so because that is the hard thing, the necessary thing, that ensures the Great Library’s survival. But not you, Thomas: you can help me. I can spare your life if you help me.”
Thomas didn’t blink. “Kill me,” he said. “I’d rather be a useless corpse than a useful fool.”
Maybe it was the bleak certainty in his voice that made the Archivist look to Zara; Thomas felt rather than saw her nod. She believed him. The Archivist sighed. “Then we’ll have to make this more difficult,” he said. “Zara. Show him.”
She walked to a tall cabinet in the corner�
�a heavy cedar thing, with the Great Library seal worked in gold on the doors—and opened it. Inside was a large silver mirror. The Archivist rose and touched the ornate frame. “I had this made a long time ago,” he said. “Another hangs in the office of the High Garda Lord Commander. One in the office of the Obscurist Magnus, one in the Lighthouse room of the Artifex Magnus. Do you know what it is?”
Thomas didn’t answer. He watched the surface of the mirror ripple like a troubled sea, and then it settled again, took on a reflection—no, not a reflection at all, an image—of a map of Alexandria. Detailed and perfect, down to what seemed to be every building, every street and alleyway.
The Archivist touched a part of the map, and the image changed. Bright red dots appeared. He touched one of them, and the image sharpened again, into what seemed a brightly lit cavern full of white houses.
No. Tombs. The Necropolis of Alexandria. The view was moving, as if they were gods looking down on the city of the dead. Thomas stepped closer, because he saw people. This was not an image. It was something else, as immediate as the connection of writing in one Codex and the precise text appearing in another. He could see people moving, and as the image sharpened, he even recognized a face.
Glain Wathen. She stood beside someone with his back turned to the view, but the posture was familiar. Scholar Wolfe. Glain was speaking with a young woman in a dark blue tunic and trousers. He knew her, too. Little Anit, Red Ibrahim’s daughter. Safe. They were safe.
Then he saw Jess. His friend sat on the ground, propped against the wall of a tomb, and his color almost matched the pale stone. He looked ill and miserable, and he had some sort of mask over his face.
But he was alive, that was clear enough, and some of the awful tension in Thomas’s gut eased. He glanced at the Archivist and realized this was not what the old man had expected, or wanted to show him; the fury in those faded eyes burned like acid.
“They’re alive,” Thomas said. “What did you think you were going to show me? All my friends, lying dead?”
The Archivist glared at him. “Watch.”
The circling view suddenly began to change. As if the watcher was falling out of the sky, plummeting down . . . toward his friends. Thomas saw a flash of metal feathers and realized what the Archivist had, what this view in his mirror showed.
They were looking through the eyes of a sphinx that had been circling quietly overhead, and now arrowed down straight for Glain.
“No!” Thomas shouted, and lunged forward, but two Spartans were there before him, spears crossed, shields joined. He ran into the barrier, and the Archivist held his ground. Smiling.
Thomas watched helplessly as Glain realized, too late, that she was in danger. The sphinx landed on her back, slammed her down to the ground, and pinned her there with a clawed paw on the back of her neck. Blood sprang from where the knife-sharp claws dug in.
“Five seconds, Thomas,” the Archivist said. “You have five seconds to agree, or her head comes off.”
There was so much blood. The claws dug deeper. Glain was writhing, trying to break free.
“Two seconds—”
“Stop!” Thomas couldn’t control the word—it burst out of him in a desperate rush. “Stop this!”
“Agree! One second!”
“Yes! I agree! Stop!”
The sphinx suddenly launched back into the air, spiraling up, and in the view as it rose, Thomas saw Wolfe rush to Glain’s side. There was no sound, but Jess was kneeling beside her, too, and others were moving to help. Bright pops from weapons, and the sphinx shuddered and veered.
Thomas tasted bile and swallowed hard. His hands had clenched into thick, painfully tense fists.
The Spartans still stood between him and the Archivist.
“Two things I know about you, Scholar Schreiber,” the Archivist said. “First, you care about your friends more than yourself. And second . . . you don’t break your word.”
“You do,” Thomas said. “Easily.”
“I’ve made you no promises, except that I wouldn’t kill your friend in that moment, and I’ve kept that. Now you must pay your debt. I need you to open the locks on Heron’s Tomb.”
Heron’s Tomb.
Thomas closed his eyes, and to his great and abiding shame, he thought, I would have done that for nothing. He’d dreamed of being inside Heron’s Tomb, surrounded by the astonishments that were rumored to be hidden there. Every Scholar did.
You can’t let him have what’s inside, he told himself. You don’t know what power Heron asked to be hidden there. You can’t let the Archivist be the first to use it. Your curiosity isn’t worth the world.
The Archivist said, “The sphinx has the taste of her now. It can track your friend anywhere in the city. Kill her at any time I please. Cross me, and Glain is dead. And Khalila. Dario. Morgan. Wolfe. Santi. That I guarantee, and you may rest assured I won’t break that promise.”
He didn’t mention Jess, Thomas realized. That was because he thought Jess was going to die, anyway.
“I’ll keep my word,” Thomas said. “Why me? Why didn’t you open it?”
“No one who’s attempted the Trial of Seven Locks has ever lived,” the old man said. “And I know I’m not the one to win that distinction. But you? Maybe, Scholar Schreiber. Maybe you will. And I know you love a puzzle. You’ll do it for the sheer challenge of it.”
The awful thing was that the old man was right.
EPHEMERA
Text of a letter from the last Archivist of the Library of Pergamum to the Archivist of the Great Library, shortly before the final destruction of Pergamum
My great friend and rival, I greet you in the sight of the gods and the name of knowledge, which we both have pursued so hotly over the years.
War is coming to our doorstep, and I fear that our library will not survive it this time. With every scroll lost, the world grows darker. Our lives are harder and shorter. I greatly fear that all that we have built is too fragile, too temporary, for it to last in a world of violence and greed.
When we are gone, remember us. Rise to meet the challenge we have set: become the greatest protector of knowledge in this world. Not for power, not for glory, not even for your Pharaoh’s pride. Do it for future generations who must build the world. The foundations must be solid. Don’t let it all fall to ruin.
When death comes to us here in Pergamum, I hope to die with honor. No doubt most of us will defend our scrolls to our last breaths, but there are always cowards. Always false friends. Always those who look to advantage and better opportunities. I have already found books missing from the collection, stolen by those who should be holding them closer than ever. So beware of that, should you find yourself in similar circumstances, may the gods forbid.
I know you, my great enemy and great friend, will defend your own library to the end should the world ever come for what you hold dear. Whatever our differences, we have that in common.
Hail and farewell.
Knowledge is all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MORGAN
“I can’t find Annis,” Morgan said, and Eskander stopped writing in his Codex, but only for a few seconds. Then he continued.
“Annis is still inside the Iron Tower,” he said. “I’d know if she’d left it.”
“What if she removed her collar?” That was both likely and, at the same time, unusual; Annis hated the collar, but she’d worn it for so long that she’d confessed to Morgan that she felt uncomfortable without it. So she might have removed it, but she wouldn’t have left without it, either.
“Even if she did, I’d still sense her crossing the threshold,” he said, and sat back. He put his pen down. “Why are you looking for her?”
“I need her help with a book. She’s fluent in Assyrian, isn’t she?”
“I wouldn’t say fluent, but she’s literate in it, yes.” He thought a
bout that a moment. “Don’t tell her I said she wasn’t fluent. She’ll take it personally.”
“I won’t,” Morgan promised. “Can you tell me where she is, then?”
Eskander looked tired. They were all tired, of course; she was trembling with exhaustion, but rest would have to wait until she finished the translation of the passage that she needed. Thomas would require the information locked away in that obscure text if he was going to understand the inner workings of Heron’s Poseidon statue. There was every possibility that if the combined navies outside the harbor concentrated Greek fire on the statue, they might breach its coated exterior. That text contained the specifics of exactly how much damage it could endure and still function.
“I can’t find her,” Eskander said. “I’m not a tracking hound, girl, I’m the Obscurist Magnus. Find her yourself; you know her almost as well as I do. Likely she’ll be in the kitchens, or the library.”
He sounded irritable, and she knew why: Eskander had never asked for this power and didn’t enjoy the responsibility, either. He’d spent too many years a hermit to gladly bear regular interruptions. Especially now, when so much hung in the balance.
She nodded and left his spare, dusty office; he’d set up his desk in an old storeroom instead of the silk-and-velvet nest that generations of other Obscurists Magni had used. The only spectacular thing in this place was the view from the wide window, but just now it only showed growing, oppressive clouds.
Annis was not in the kitchens (which was, indeed, a good guess), and the workers there hadn’t seen her recently. Nor was she in the Iron Tower’s library room, though a few other Obscurists were there, taking comfort in books while they rested from one difficult task and prepared for another. Everyone worked today. Everyone.
Which was why it was strange she couldn’t find Annis.
Perhaps she’s with one of her lovers, she thought, but rejected the idea immediately. Annis did have a number of them, but she also took her duties seriously. This wasn’t the time or place.