Smoke and Iron

by Rachel Caine

  "Trouble will be getting in," said one of them. "The main entrance will be well secured, and none of us has Library bands. They'll have automata everywhere, not to mention High Garda."

  "Fewer High Garda than you'd think," Jess said. "Word is, they're staying in the compound." At least he hoped that would be the case, that Santi had been able to convince his friends and fellow captains to refuse the orders. "And there's another way in. I've been there. I know it."

  "Show us," Anit said, and stepped back.

  Jess put his finger on the door that led down to the oldest parts of the amphitheater and the unexpected modernity of the workshop; praise the old gods of Egypt, these particular corridors were solid concrete and timber, and they wouldn't be moving like the ones in the Serapeum. "Get us in there," he said, "and I can get you directly to the floor of the arena. We can get your people to safety the same way."

  "You're sure? It looks sealed."

  "It isn't," Jess said. "And if you want weapons, that's where they're being made. New weapons. Deadly ones."

  "How do you know this?" Tadalesh asked.

  "The Archivist showed me," Jess said. "And I'd like to make it his worst mistake yet."

  A sharp sound rang through the room--a bell, ringing in the distance. They all looked up, as if to hear it better, but Anit was the first to react. "Someone's forced the outer door. High Garda, most likely. Exits," she snapped. "Scatter plan. Gather your people and head for the amphitheater. Bring weapons. I'll join you in the street behind the main entrance." She turned to Jess. "Can you get us through the perimeter fence? Take care of the automata?"

  "We can," Brendan said, when Jess stopped to think for a few seconds. "We'll gather our own forces and meet you there. All right?"

  She nodded. "I'll take you to an exit. From there, you're on your own. Good luck to you."

  "Good luck to us all," Jess said. "Anit?" Her gaze caught and held his. "Thank you."

  He meant it for much more than just the help in escaping, and she knew it.

  "It's for my father," she said. "And after this is done, we will talk about compensation." Her smile was brief, and every bit her father's. "After all, even family gets paid. Eventually."

  PART FOURTEEN

  THE FEAST OF GREATER BURNING

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THOMAS

  Working was what kept him steady, and so he spent the hours in the workshop of the Spanish embassy. It had been built by a competent engineer--he could see that at a glance; walking into it had made him feel at home in a way few things could these days. The smell of tools, oils, freshly lathed wood and metal.

  "I hope this is to your liking," said Ambassador Santiago. He stood in the doorway surveying the large room, and clearly not much familiar with the tools, presses, vise benches, and materials carefully placed for convenience. "My artisans use it, as do my soldiers. Is there anything you might need that you don't see here?"

  "Yes," Thomas said. He walked over to a stack of ready-made rifle barrels and checked the alignment by rolling one on the table. Straight and true. That was good. Very good. "I'll need a diamond. A large one, please."

  "A--" He'd succeeded in putting Santiago at a loss for words. "I see. How large, precisely?"

  Thomas showed him with a space between two fingers. Not a small space. "About this," he said. "And as flawless as you can find, please. If there are rubies and sapphires, those will also be welcome."

  The ambassador's expression was priceless. Thomas was mildly sorry that Jess wasn't here to see it. "Are you . . . making some kind of jewelry?"

  "This clearly isn't the time for that," Thomas said. "No. I am making a weapon. One capable of bringing down a flying automaton. And I think you would agree, it is something we very badly need."

  "Do you want an assistant? I can send someone--"

  He missed Jess, but Jess had other concerns. "No. Just the gems, please. And if there's food, have someone bring some? I forgot to eat."

  "Of course." The ambassador clearly thought he was insane, but Thomas paid no attention to that, or to the man's departure. He had only a few hours to do what he needed to do, and much to avoid thinking about. With quick, precise movements, he pulled four barrels, checked each one, and then moved on to retrieve the thinnest wire on the shelves. It was expertly drawn and perfectly formed, and as he measured and cut what he needed, he remembered the makeshift, laughable device he and Jess had cobbled together out of hope and scraps in Philadelphia. Amazing it had worked even once, much less held together long enough to save their lives.

  He'd made improvements on his design since then, and now, as he imagined the three-dimensional plans he'd so carefully constructed in his head, he knew what he was creating was, in its way, as dangerous as the press the Library feared so much. High Garda weapons were deadly, but they had limited ranges.

  This weapon--at least, theoretically--could strike any target at any distance, so long as it traveled in a straight line. In theory, if powerful enough, it could cross the distance between stars, the way starlight reached the earth.

  Light was the most ephemeral of forces, and yet one of the most powerful. It had properties of gas and liquid and solid. Pure light, solid light . . . that was an astonishing and dangerous thing. And once he had created it and used it in public, where others could see . . . he could not control how it would be used in other hands.

  So be it. Just now, he couldn't think of the future, or of anything else beyond what would come when the new day arrived.

  One part at a time, he machined the pieces he needed for not one but four separate Rays of Apollo. He had no written plans, but he didn't need them; he had the image in his mind, and he could spin and enlarge and match pieces to it at will. He worked quietly and surely, building each piece with care, and when food arrived he ate without even looking at what the Spanish had provided him and drank whatever had come with it. His concentration stayed on the plans and the parts and the quiet, intense satisfaction when a piece fit perfectly with the next.

  At some point, the ambassador must have returned, because he turned to see a black leather case on the table beside him and put the carefully assembled weapon--the first of four--aside to open it.

  Inside sat the largest, most perfect diamond he'd ever seen. The size of a baby's hand, and when he put it to the light--morning light, he realized, beginning to reflect from the distant golden cap of the Serapeum--the light exploded into perfect rainbows around him. Flawless.

  It would do.

  Next to it sat five other stones: two rubies, a truly enormous emerald, and two sapphires of unusual clarity. The note with them said, Spain will expect these returned, Scholar Schreiber.

  Thomas examined and discarded one of the rubies and--with regret--the emerald, which simply wouldn't fit without alterations he knew the ambassador would frown on. Then he began to add the stones to the weapons, fixing them in place with the mounts he'd added for that purpose.

  Now he needed power.

  He walked out of the workshop into the embassy, ignoring the polite inquiries of the few staff about at this hour (who were, he vaguely noticed, packing things as if to move). The questions became less polite when he ripped open the control panel he found in a maintenance closet and stripped out the power supply for the chemical glows. The room plunged into inky darkness, except for the rising laster of dawn through the windows, and the questions turned into demands.

  He was ripping away the fourth power supply when the guards surrounded him, and a very harried, tired-looking man in a silk robe came into the room, took everything in at a glance before the power went out, and shouted for the guards to hold their fire.

  A shot went off, but it missed him, and Thomas shoved his way through and into the embassy entry hall, which had better light from the east-facing windows. Some of the guards and servants were activating portable glows, and the ambassador was speaking to him, but Thomas wasn't listening. He was closely examining the contacts and matching the power flo
w of these particular units against the requirements of the Ray; they were complicated mathematical calculations, and he truly didn't have time to spare for the man. He hadn't destroyed anything. Merely borrowed. Even now, a servant of the residence was plugging in new power supplies and the lights were coming back on.

  Though he supposed he could have asked. It was simply that he was so close to finishing his task that communicating with someone else was a waste of time he couldn't spare.

  The ambassador, thoroughly exasperated (at least, that was what Thomas gathered from the way he threw up his hands), stalked away to berate Scholar Wolfe, who stood watching from the stairs.

  Ja. This would serve. All the calculations fit. He'd need to install some fittings to secure the power supply and make it simple to replace, but it would do until he could spend the time to create something better.

  When he finished, it was full light outside. Morning. And as he looked at the four weapons he'd built, the terrible power of them he'd harnessed, the focus broke inside him, and all the things he hadn't allowed himself to feel rushed back in.

  He sat down, hard, on a workbench and put his head in his hands. His breath came faster, and then faster still, an engine turning in his chest that he couldn't control.

  And he didn't know why.

  Someone called his name, but he couldn't look up or answer. It wasn't until her weight settled in next to him and he smelled the soft jasmine scent of her perfume that he knew Khalila had joined him. Her hands rested gently on his shoulder and his back. She was saying his name.

  He couldn't get his breath. The engine inside him was racing, faster and faster, and he saw black spots now, and his hands trembled like an old man's.

  "Thomas, put your head down. There. Slow, deep breaths. In through your nose, then out through your mouth. You're all right now. You're safe. You're safe."

  Whether it was her even, quiet voice or the gentle pressure of her hands, he began to listen and follow her advice. It helped push back the dizziness, the spots, the panic that had threatened to send him to a very dark place. When his breathing slowed, he sent her a quick, guilty glance. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know--"

  "I do," she said. "You're afraid. We're all afraid. Do you feel a little better?"

  He nodded. "I suppose--I suppose I felt very alone for a moment. When I'm making something, there's nothing else, and then . . . it's gone. And it's only me." He managed a smile. "And I am sometimes not quite enough."

  "Because of Rome?"

  "Yes." He didn't want to talk about that yet, though he knew--and Wolfe had quietly told him--that only talking would ease the pressure building inside of him. "I needed to make something to help us. This was all I could think of. Is Jess--" She shook her head, and he didn't finish the question. "He'll be all right. He's a survivor, our Jess."

  "Yes," she said, and her arm slid into the crook of his, holding tight. "I hope Dario is."

  "Dario?" Thomas blinked. He'd missed something in his preoccupations. He'd been working so intently that he'd ignored everything, and perhaps . . . perhaps he shouldn't have. "What about him?"

  "He was taken," she said. Her voice remained steady, but he felt the tremor in her. "He's-- I don't know, Thomas. I hope he's alive. I pray he is. If he isn't . . ."

  "He is," Thomas said, and put his arm around her shoulders. She felt slight and fragile, but he knew her strength, too. "We will all be all right." To his surprise, he almost believed it. "We've come so far, and through so much. And if I'm wrong, and today is the end of it . . ."

  "I couldn't ask for better friends to have at my side," Khalila finished, which was exactly his thought. "I know. I feel the same." She hesitated a moment and then said, "Do you want to tell me about Rome?"

  "No," he said. "I want you to pick up one of those and come with me."

  She slipped off of the bench and took up one of the sleek new weapons. She seemed surprised when she lifted it. "It's lighter than I thought."

  "Yes. I thought of some improvements. Be careful of the trigger." He picked up the one on the other end and led her out of the workshop through the back door. The dawn had that strangely magical glow to it, thick with morning dew, a soft and shimmering color that faded from blazing orange to gold to blue, and to the west still clinging stubbornly to night. The garden they'd entered had a stone wall built around it, and Thomas nodded at the far end of it. "There. Shoot."

  "I--" Khalila gave him an uncertain look but hefted the weapon competently enough. Wolfe's training, and hard lessons in survival. She sighted, took a breath, and pressed the guarded trigger.

  A beam of solid red light poured from the barrel and struck the wall, and the wall simply . . . vanished with a crack and a sudden puff of steam. No, it melted. Thomas blinked, and his brain made involuntary heat-transfer calculations, and he looked back at Khalila. "Is it hot to the touch?"

  "Warm," she said. "But not too hot, no. I only fired it for a second."

  Thomas nodded, raised his gun, and sighted as well. He fired at the newly shortened wall, and once again, it cracked, hissed steam, and melted into a thick, reddish mass on the ground. As he watched, the melted stone cooled to dull crimson, then black, like lava.

  He checked the power reserve gauge on each of the weapons and nodded. "Good. They should each handle four or five of such bursts. Fewer, if the trigger is held longer."

  Khalila looked glad to hand hers back to him. "I suppose we need them," she said. "But they're--"

  "Powerful," he said. "Yes. And dangerous. But we need to be dangerous now, don't we? If we want to survive?"

  She nodded. And though he didn't want to, he knew they were both thinking of the same question.

  At what cost?

  Khalila walked with him back into the workshop, where they found Scholar Wolfe standing there. He'd put on a black Scholar's robe, and in all aspects, Thomas thought, he looked mostly unchanged since the first day he'd met them at the train to Alexandria. For all the damage, Wolfe survived.

  "These are astonishing," Wolfe said. "You did these overnight?"

  "I needed to keep busy."

  Wolfe laughed, but it sounded bleak. "Yes. Obviously. But only Thomas Schreiber could keep busy by perfecting a beautiful death machine like this. Perhaps you should take up cards."

  "We need them," Thomas said.

  "Oh, I know we do," Wolfe agreed. "But forgive me for clinging one more moment to the fiction that right will prevail without becoming worse than its opposite."

  Thomas felt something zip through him, like a high-tension wire breaking, and he didn't know he was angry, truly angry, until that moment. "You want to let them continue to do what they did to us? To thousands before us, and after? Do you really think it will stop, if we don't stop it?"

  "I'd like to believe that even now, there is some argument that avoids a bloodbath."

  "Then make it," Thomas said. "But I won't let them do what was done to me, and to you, to Dario or Khalila, or anyone they've taken." He took one of the rays and held it out to Wolfe. "It's time to decide, Scholar. Are you talking, or fighting?"

  Wolfe glared at him and at the weapon; Thomas knew he was thinking about Santi, who would never have hesitated.

  He took the ray and said, "I can do both."

  "Then let's be ready," Thomas said. "Because it won't be long now."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  SANTI

  From his perch on the roof of the Spanish embassy, Santi watched the procession wind past the Serapeum. He'd borrowed a pair of field glasses from the Spanish commander, who'd been more occupied with loading weapons, armor, and valuables into the convoy of trunks set to depart shortly; the embassy staff would be going with it, and the ambassador, too. To his credit, Alvaro Santiago truly didn't want to go, but he was sensible enough to know that should the Archivist come out of this day on top, Spain would be next on his list to crush, and the embassy would have all of the safety of a globe of Greek fire.

  "Well?" Zara asked. She was
at his shoulder, as still as a lounging cat. "Anything?"

  "High Garda Elite companies," he said, and lowered the glasses. "Not a single High Garda banner. I think you're right. The High Commander closed the compound."

  "Or, just as likely, he's no longer the High Commander," she said. "Given how popular he wasn't with his peers. They'll sit this out. But that might not matter. The Elites are enough, especially with the automata out in force, and that beast up there." She nodded toward the Serapeum, where the metallic shimmer of the dragon sat coiled around the top of the pyramid, awaiting its orders. "That has to go first, or we'll end up like pigs turning on spits."

  "Nothing from the Iron Tower?"

  "Nothing except that the Obscurist has left it, along with a solid contingent of the guards assigned there. That's him, in the red. The automata are still working. Nothing's changed. Whatever your girl was doing in there, she's failed."

  "I wouldn't count her out."

  "Or in," Zara said. "We have our company. We have whatever's left of your Scholar's students. We have . . . what else, exactly? Nic, this is a fool's errand. The odds aren't even high; they're zero. If we go out there, we will die. And they will win, forever. Is that what you call victory?"

  He didn't answer her. He took up the glasses again and tightened the focus. It was far to the road where the procession was taking place, but he thought that walking just behind the Obscurist was someone in a white robe. Someone who might have been Morgan.

  If he's taken her from the Tower, what does that mean? That she's won? Or that she's lost? He couldn't know, and Zara's points were irritatingly right. There were a few failure points, and thus far, all of them seemed to have crashed in on themselves. Jess and his brother were missing, gone off on some revenge mission. There was no indication that any of the Scholars that Wolfe had approached--or any from the distant Serapeums--would offer their support. The automata remained a danger, and the Obscurists showed no sign of turning on their master.

  And Dario was missing. Taken, and perhaps dead, and of all of these things, Santi felt that the keenest. The loss of any of these young, brilliant minds was something he, like Wolfe, didn't want to face. And as unlikable as Dario might have been at times, he'd changed. He'd become something better.