by Rachel Caine
We light the world.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JESS
“You shouldn’t be here,” Wolfe said to Jess, while Glain wrote in her Codex and Morgan spoke to Dario. “I told you to stay in bed, boy. And you promised.”
Jess shrugged. “Glain was in danger. Staying flat on my back there accomplishes nothing. Being upright with you might.”
“The only thing it will accomplish is to get you killed.”
Wolfe’s voice was severe, but Jess didn’t miss the pain hidden under it, either. He knew Wolfe was worried. But there wasn’t any point. The entire Great Library could collapse before dawn; the Russians could prevail at the gate, could rumble through the streets in their armored carriers and crush the High Garda. The Iron Tower would close its doors, and so would the Serapeum and the Lighthouse and the Great Archives, but how long would that hold if Alexandria itself was taken? Eventually, the Great Library would have to submit. The city’s residents wouldn’t put up a fight; no one had ever trained them how. It had never been necessary.
He decided to be honest. Just with Wolfe, who he thought already knew. “I’m not going to make it, Scholar. Dying in a bed . . . that’s not me. Getting killed for something worthwhile is better than dying alone. At the worst, I might buy you time to do what’s needed.”
Wolfe’s expression flickered, but Jess didn’t know what was underneath that mask. Anger? Anguish? Maybe both. “And what’s that, in your opinion?”
“Kill that old bastard,” Jess said. “Don’t take him prisoner. Don’t let Khalila tell you that justice must be impartial. She’s right, but this is an exception. We’ve seen what damage he’ll do as long as he draws breath.”
He meant it. And he was honest enough, too, to know that part of the reason he said it with so much conviction was his own rage. He was hungry for revenge. And sick that he hadn’t taken it out on Zara, who’d deserved it. Mercy was the effect of his friends, dragging him kicking and screaming into being a better man.
Jess didn’t really think their good influence would last, in the end. He had too much of his family running through his veins, too much of his father’s twisted, stunted outlook rubbed into him like a stain. It would take him a lifetime to unlearn it all. And here he was, barely eighteen, and dying, and all he could truly do was make one last mark. In a very real way, he thought, he’d already died in the arena with his brother.
Twins were not meant to survive alone.
Wolfe simply shook his head and motioned to Dario, who stepped away to huddle with Glain and Wolfe. That left Jess with Morgan, who was watching him with a frown. “You look dreadful,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“I mean it, Jess. You shouldn’t be here.”
She was seeing more, he thought, than just his generally awful outward appearance. He couldn’t hide from her. It was something he both loved and feared about her. “You can’t fix me,” he said. “Can you?”
She shook her head. “It was your choice,” she said. “I’ve been reminded that I can’t save everyone, especially not if it’s their own chosen path.” She smiled, briefly. It hurt him. “I’m not even sure I can save myself, if I’m being quite honest.”
Dario was shaking his head forcefully, and that caught Jess’s attention. He left Morgan and walked to join that conversation. “No,” Dario was saying. “I’m not doing this. I’ve had enough of intrigue. Let someone else—”
“No one else can make him believe it,” Glain said. “Who do you think lies better, you or me?”
“He will know! I already double-crossed the Spanish; don’t you think he’d have been told of that? I arranged for the slaughter of half his High Garda Elites! I’m the last person he’d believe just now.”
“Dario. There’s no one else.” Glain sounded calm and patient, but there was weight there. “He’s not going to believe Wolfe, or me, or gods know, Jess. Definitely not Morgan. Who else is there?”
Dario’s brows drew together, and from Jess’s viewpoint he could see the Spaniard really didn’t like the suggestion he was about to make. “I . . . might have a solution,” he said. “Jess, what about your father?”
“No,” Wolfe snapped, at the same time that Jess said, “Yes.” They looked at each other. Wolfe got to it first. “There is absolutely no way that I trust your father to do anything but betray our interests.”
“Well, true,” Jess agreed. He drew a breath harder than he meant to and was racked by coughs that grayed out his vision and turned his legs to jelly, and when he blinked his way back into the world, Wolfe was clutching his arm to hold him up. And they all stared at him with identical expressions of concern . . . no, not Morgan. Morgan’s was sadder than the others. Tinged with the knowledge he was sicker than he pretended. “Sorry. Yes, my da is a snake who’ll turn on anyone for a profit. But he won’t turn on me. I’m all he’s got left.”
“Jess—” Morgan’s voice was gentle, and more than a little appalled. “Jess, you can’t do this.”
“It’s something I can do,” he said. “I can beg. And he’ll enjoy that.”
They all fell silent, even Dario, who in earlier days might have mocked him. Maybe they all knew the weight of what that meant to him. He ignored them. He took out his Codex and wrote to his father, in the family’s code. As he did, he asked, “Where do you want to set the trap?”
A cough seized him at the end of that, twisted his lungs into knots, and reduced him to gagging blood on the ground. More than he liked. Wolfe held on to him, and he could feel the trembling of the Scholar’s hands. See the horror, quickly covered again, on Dario’s face.
After a long rain-drenched span of seconds, Glain said, “All right. You remember how to get to the ancient Serapeum, don’t you? The one on our first day at Ptolemy House?”
The day they’d discovered just how potentially deadly the game of the Great Library really was. Jess caught his breath, but it tasted foul and didn’t do him much good. “The old Archivist won’t like it,” he managed to say. “Too enclosed.”
“Have your father say it’s for his own safety. That’s no doubt true; there’s a standing bounty on Callum Brightwell’s head all over the Great Library.”
Jess didn’t waste time or breath discussing that. He just wrote the message out. He wondered what his father felt, seeing his handwriting appear. Wondered if it brought relief or anger. Probably both.
The delay was agonizing. What if he’s so angry he won’t reply? What if he’s cut you off entirely? That would probably be a personal blessing, but now . . .
His father’s handwriting began to inscribe itself onto the page, bland words that hid the message within. Are you sure?
Yes, Jess replied. Make it quick.
The delay was longer this time. He tried to ignore his own weariness, the shakes that rattled through him, the bleariness of his eyes. Come on, Da. For one time in your life, be useful to me without any gain for yourself.
The message finally came through. He took the bait. I’ve promised him escape and the funds to raise his own army to take back the throne. I told him you and Brendan both betrayed the family business and I wanted to make amends. He might not believe it. I wouldn’t.
Jess waited for something else, anything else . . . a simple How are you? or Look after yourself, or the impossible I love you, son. Anything but silence.
He finally closed the Codex and swallowed a bitter sense of loss. He hadn’t actually lost anything.
But it still hurt.
“He’s sent the message to the old man, and the old man’s agreed. Whether or not the Archivist will show up . . . that’s not certain.”
“I’ll go there,” Wolfe said. “Glain? We’ll need your squad. And to be cleverer than the old man thinks we are.”
He glanced at Jess, just briefly, but Jess understood that to mean something. He nodded.
“I�
��ll be fine; the Medica gave me a stronger mask and new medication on the way out,” he said. He turned to Morgan, but seeing her face made him forget what he meant to say. She knew he was lying. “Can you help us with this?”
“Yes. I wish I could kill him for you. But . . . I can’t.” She lifted her hand so the ring was visible. “Eskander gave me this to help me control my . . . hungers. The ring won’t allow me to harm anyone unless they’re harming me first.” She looked him straight in the eyes as she continued. “It also won’t let me take away conscious choices people make. Such as making a deliberate decision to sacrifice themselves. Bear that in mind.”
He nodded. He understood. And, in a strange way, he was grateful for it. Maybe he wouldn’t be when this all came to an end and he was gasping for his last breath. But for now it felt comforting to know that his choices were his own, still.
“My clever father,” Wolfe muttered. “Trust Eskander to find yet another way to make this more difficult. All right, then. Do what you can. Dario—”
“I’m not going to kill him,” Dario said, and held up both hands in refusal. “I’ve got no wish to be cut to pieces by whatever automata he’s programmed to avenge him. Or worse, murdered by his lackeys. That would be a commoner’s way to die.”
“We’ll make sure everyone knows how royally you bled to death,” Glain said, but she was smiling. Jess felt it, too: belonging somewhere. Belonging here, with them. It meant something more than just . . . usefulness.
He was fairly certain, though he had no good context for it, that this was what it felt like to have a real, genuinely loving family.
“Come on, then,” Glain said. “My squad will meet us there. If I remember correctly, there’s access to a sniper’s gallery on the upper level. We’ll position there.”
“He’ll know about it,” Wolfe warned her. “Our sole advantage is that we get there first.”
“Then let’s move,” Jess said. “I’ll keep up.” The looks they gave one another, if not him . . . It was irritating and warm at the same time. “Fine. Find me a ride, then.”
“I happen to have a carrier parked just around the corner,” Glain said, as if she hadn’t been thinking about him when she ordered it up. “Dario, don’t even think about asking for a nicer ride.”
He shrugged that away. “Sadly, I’m becoming used to the hardships.”
* * *
—
They did indeed get to the original Serapeum first; the carrier dropped them on the street near Ptolemy House and sped away, moving fast to some other destination. The rain was just a light drizzle now, and a bit warmer, or else Jess had just become accustomed to discomfort. The clouds still hit the moon, and even the streetlight glows couldn’t make the streets look less than deserted and forbidding. From here, the sounds of fighting still echoed, but far away, as if they might not matter at all.
“Someone’s still at Ptolemy House,” Dario said, and Jess turned in that direction. Their old dormitory must have contained postulants for the upcoming year—unfortunate timing for them, he supposed—and he wondered who had been appointed as their proctor. Not Wolfe, obviously. For a moment he remembered what it had been like there. Dario, the peacock bully. Thomas, shy and quiet and unsure of his own genius. Khalila had changed the least, he thought; she’d always been so calmly self-assured. He and Morgan and Glain had probably shifted the most, each in their own directions. Each toward their strengths.
Had Wolfe changed? If he had, it was impossible to tell. He slapped both of them on the backs of their heads as he passed.
“Gawk later,” he said. “Move.”
The entrance to the ancient Serapeum, the very first public library of Alexandria—and in the world—seemed dark and deserted, until one of Glain’s Blue Dogs melted out of the shadows. More followed. Not a magic trick, but it felt like one tonight. Jess nodded to those he knew, which was most, and from the way they looked at him, even the new ones knew who he was. “No one inside,” Glain’s lieutenant said. “You’re sure about this. Once we’re inside, we’re rats in a trap.”
“No,” Glain said. “We’re the cats. The rats are about to arrive, so let’s get set up. Scholar, you, Jess, and Dario are the cheese. I’ll keep Morgan with me.”
Morgan started past but suddenly turned and enveloped him in a hug. Jess, surprised, returned it for just a few seconds before stepping away. “Not good-bye,” he said. “You’re not that lucky.”
“I’m very lucky,” Morgan said. “Look who I call friends.”
Friends was a deliberate choice of word, he thought, and so was the hand she put so gently against his face. He swallowed a thickness in his throat as Glain, the Blue Dogs, and Morgan disappeared up a hidden set of narrow stairs. The space down here in the round chamber was empty; the scrolls were long since gone, and the stone shelves sat empty. It seemed ominously still.
Jess felt naked, cold, and suddenly very aware that he might end his life in this place. Well, he thought, dying in an ancient library isn’t the worst way to go.
He just wished it had books on those empty shelves. Rare ones, the kind that smelled of the years they’d survived, written in the hand of their maker. He’d miss that. He’d miss a lot of things. Breakfast at their favorite sidewalk café with his friends. Thick Alexandrian coffee. The twisting streets of London. The taste of Spanish food. The smell of roses.
He closed his eyes and tried to hold on to those things until his brother’s whisper said, Don’t die just yet. I’m enjoying my time on my own for a change.
He almost smiled. Almost. Brendan felt so real, so present, that he thought he could touch him.
When he opened his eyes, Dario said, “They’re coming.”
He expected the Archivist, but instead it was a High Garda Elite captain, decked out in the red uniform. He, Jess thought, could pass even Lord Commander Santi’s harsh inspection. Even his boots looked polished.
The captain hadn’t even bothered to draw his gun, and didn’t now. He also didn’t look at all surprised. And . . . he was alone. No sign of the Archivist.
“Well,” he said. “I didn’t really expect much. But this is a nice surprise.”
“Where is your master?” Wolfe asked. “Too afraid to show his face?”
“Too smart, Scholar. Far too smart. Unlike you. Really, did you think this simpleminded trap would work? That you’d convince the most hunted man in Alexandria to put his head in a noose just because a criminal whose sons already betrayed him said so? I’m curious.”
“No,” Wolfe said. “I really didn’t think he would. But it’s good he sent you. You’ll do.”
“Do for what? Did you forget about the observation level?” He looked up. So did Jess, and felt his stomach turn over.
He’d expected to see the Blue Dogs and Morgan. But they weren’t there. He didn’t know those faces at all.
Those hard, angry, unmerciful faces were aiming rifles down at him, Dario, and Wolfe. The trap they’d planned had closed on them instead.
“Any last words, Scholar? I’ll be happy to record them and add them to your journal . . . Oh, sorry, the Archivist has ordered your journals burned. No one will remember you. Especially when we kill all your followers.”
“I don’t have followers,” Wolfe said. He looked at his students. “Do I?”
“No, sir,” Dario said. “I’m afraid not. You’re too unlikeable.”
“As I feared.” He looked back at the captain. “You see? So leave my young friends out of this. Make it between adults, if you can manage that.”
“I’m not interested in fighting you, Scholar.”
“Well, in that case, I do have last words,” Wolfe said. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
The captain drew his gun at last. He aimed straight at Wolfe. “Go ahead. Ten seconds.”
Wolfe smiled. “I only need one. Morgan?”
From
somewhere up above, she said, “Yes.” And she dropped an illusion that must have cost her much, in terms of power and endurance.
Glain and her squad were standing motionless behind the Elite soldiers. The Blue Dogs barked in unison, and it was a guttural, eerie sound that woke chills down Jess’s spine.
“Give up, Captain,” Wolfe said quietly. “For the sake of your soldiers. Tell us where to find the Archivist and we’ll spare all your lives.”
Jess knew it wouldn’t work. He lunged forward and grabbed hold of the Elite captain’s hand as the man fired; the shot barely missed Wolfe’s head and impacted the hard stone wall beyond. Gunfire erupted on the second level, but it wasn’t coming at them. There was a battle going on between the soldiers. He could only hope Glain’s squad was faster, if not better.
He managed to get the gun wide enough that the next shot the captain fired still went wide, but his strength was failing him. Dario came to the rescue, slamming a fist hard into the man’s temple and rocking him off balance, and he, too, got a grip on the man, trying for the gun. Wolfe was moving forward, but everything seemed slowed down now. Jess shook with effort. His lungs burned. His whole body felt raw and empty and so very tired.
I’m losing. He could taste defeat. It was bitter, like the blood welling up in his lungs.
Wolfe took the gun away, went back a step, and without a blink of hesitation, shot the man.
The red-uniformed captain clearly couldn’t believe it. Jess could almost read his rueful thoughts: Felled by a Scholar.
The man’s knees folded, and the captain collapsed to the floor, bleeding. Dario stepped back, and pulled Jess away with him.
“Where is the old man?” Wolfe asked, and aimed his weapon at the captain’s head. His voice sounded very quiet. Very calm. “You have one chance. Just one. Then I kill you.”
“No you won’t, Scholar,” the captain said, and bared his teeth. “I surrender. And you’re not a murderer, are you?”
“Glain?” Wolfe called. Jess heard her boots on the stairs, and in the next instant she was beside them, smelling of gunpowder and blood. Her favorite perfume. “Status?”