by Rachel Caine
"A unique treasure like that is more useful when employed strategically, for your own purposes." Jess put an edge on his voice. "This is the most dangerous place in the world to smuggle a book, and yet you've made a career of it--an empire, of sorts. You'd make it a mission to have that information at your disposal."
"No one can disable these creatures. It's impossible."
"Nothing's impossible," Jess said. "They're mechanical creatures. They're made. Someone knows their secrets, and secrets are always for sale to those who look hard enough. And if I know anything about you, sir, it's that you would look very hard."
"At everyone," Red Ibrahim agreed. He put down his coffee cup with precise control. "What does your father offer in exchange for this gift of all gifts? Presuming such a thing exists at all."
Jess tried to keep his face as calm as Ibrahim's, his pulse as slow. He didn't blink. "I have a copy of The First Book of Urizen by William Blake."
Ibrahim's expression was just as still. "There are eight copies of such a book in the world," he said. "I would need something a great deal more rare. It is, as you say, precious treasure indeed, this information."
"There were eight copies," Jess said. "Six of them were purchased by ink-lickers, who ate them in some sort of sick ritual four months back. As I'm sure you already know. That leaves two: the one in my father's vaults . . . and the one I have stashed here in Alexandria. Which can be yours, if you have what I want."
"Ah," Ibrahim said softly. "Now we come to it, I believe. What you want. It is not your father who asks. He'd never let you trade away such an important, valuable volume. He's gotten along well enough without such information, despite the best efforts of the London Garda. No, I think it is you who needs it so badly."
Jess didn't answer that. He felt sweat break out hotly on the back of his neck, but he hoped his face remained unreadable. After a moment, he said, "One of two copies left in the world. I'm offering it in a fair exchange. It's a prince's ransom."
Ibrahim shared a look with his daughter. Anit said, "It is a good price, is it not?"
"It is," Ibrahim agreed. "But that isn't the point. The point is that young Brightwell here is trading against his family's interests, for personal reasons. Tell me, does it have to do with the book you spent so much time and geneih tracking down, and bought only yesterday, perhaps? The one about the prisoners of the Archivist?"
This was dangerous. Very dangerous. Jess said nothing. Ibrahim sat back against the cushions and rested his chin on one hand. He wore a ruby ring on one finger, and it looked like a drop of fresh blood. "I want no involvement in Library affairs," he continued. "Nor in the private crusade of a brash young man. This is not our trade."
"I'm asking for information, and that is your trade," Jess shot back. "Do we have a deal or not?"
Ibrahim continued to stare at him with those unsettling dark eyes for so long Jess felt words bubbling up and trying to escape--angry words. He swallowed them down and waited. Finally, the man stirred, rose to his feet, and looked at his daughter, who still sat quietly watching. "Anit. I leave it to you."
"What?" Jess shot to his feet, but Red Ibrahim was already going, heading for the doorway that led to the interior of the house. For a hot moment, Jess thought about chasing after him, but he also knew a man like that didn't survive by being careless. If he'd turned his back, there were plenty of knives ready to protect him.
"Sit," Anit said, and there was an unexpected layer of steel to her voice. "Sit down, Jess." Young and tender she might be, but she was something else, too. Hard in a way that he had never seen before--not unless he saw it in the mirror. She put her hand to a chain around her neck, one that held a ring dangling from it--a large carved ring, with an Egyptian hieroglyph of a bird.
He stared after her father as the man closed the door, but he sank onto the cushions again. "What's he training you in tonight? How to refuse to help and still keep the Brightwells as allies?"
"He meant what he said. It is my decision. He has left it to me." Jess moved his gaze to her, and found her nearly as unreadable as her father, but there was a little lift at the corners of her mouth. Amusement. "I imagine you're thinking what a cruel fate it is, being left to the whims of a mere girl."
"Something like that."
She played idly with the ring on the chain. "We are survivors, Jess," she said. "You and I. We come from the same dark places. If you think I don't understand you . . . But tell me: why didn't you go to your brother for this instead? Surely it would have been simpler and cheaper?"
"Brendan?" Jess felt his brows lower in a frown. "He's not in Alexandria. He's gone. Back to London."
"No," Anit said. "You should perhaps keep better track of your twin. I don't wish to offend you, but he can be a nasty piece of work."
"Sounds like my brother, all right. Why is he still here?"
She lifted both palms. "Ask him. I'll tell you where he stays."
"And you'd like to be rid of him, is that it?"
"One Brightwell in Alexandria is more than sufficient. We would rather that be you." She lowered her hands to her lap and cocked her head, with a real smile dancing on her lips now. "I had two brothers myself. I know how difficult they can be."
Jess cleared his throat. "So what's your decision? Your father left it up to you."
"He did." She studied him for a long moment, then said, "Will you swear you will never betray where you got this information?"
"I swear on--what would you like me to swear on?"
"The soul of your firstborn." She outright grinned this time. "It's traditional."
"The rate I'm going, it may be an empty promise. All right. I swear on the soul of my firstborn that I won't tell anyone where I got this information. Not my friends, not my family. I'll never betray the house of Red Ibrahim."
"I believe you," she said. "And if you break that oath, Egyptian curses are cruel, Jess. And quick. Remember that." She rose to her feet and headed for the door.
"Wait! Where are you going?"
"To get the book you asked for," she said.
"I didn't bring--"
"I trust you," Anit said. "If I didn't, you'd be dead already."
It wasn't a long wait, which surprised him; they must have kept this incredibly dangerous information here, in their home. His father would have been scandalized. The Brightwell business was always kept completely separate from the Brightwell residence, though Jess had sneaked in plenty of illegal books in his time--to read, not trade.
She was back in only moments, casually carrying a little leather-bound volume. It looked worn and plain, obviously someone's personal notebook. As he took the volume from her, his fingers felt a rougher patch on the leather, and when he looked closer, there were dark stains soaked into it. Blood.
He opened it to look at the contents, stared, and then raised his gaze to hers. "It's in code."
"Of course," she said. "And I will give you the cipher to read it when you bring me the payment you promised. I said I trusted you. I'm not a complete fool." She hesitated for a moment. "Jess, I said I had two brothers."
He was busy flipping pages, trying to see a pattern in the cipher--a useless effort, of course, but better than giving in to frustration. "Are you threatening to set them on me if I don't deliver? I will."
"I had two brothers," Anit said, and put her hand to the chain around her neck and the engraved ring that hung there. "They're dead. The reason they are dead is the book you are holding in your hands." The ring, Jess realized, was sized for larger fingers. A young man's fingers.
It stopped him cold, along with the realization that the dark stains on the cover could have been her brother's blood. He looked up and into her eyes. They were as unreadable as her father's.
"If you try to use this information," she said, "you'll be killed. I would hate to see that happen. It's a fool's bargain, Jess. My father paid a great deal to get this book, and it's cost us more than it could ever be worth. I'm only giving you fair warning."
His throat felt suddenly tight, and he forced a smile as he said, "I'll be back with the Blake in an hour."
She nodded. "I will be waiting." Somewhere in the back of the house, a bird began to sing loudly and musically, and Anit turned her head toward it with a smile. "It's our pet skylark," she said. "My younger brother built a house for it. The song is so beautiful, isn't it?"
Jess held the bloodstained book in one hand and said, "It is."
If this ended badly, at least he could enjoy the bright, familiar song of a bird he'd grown up hearing back home.
EPHEMERA
Text of a message from the Artifex Magnus, head of the Artifex school of the Great Library, to an unnamed recipient Greetings and fair wishes, brave soldier. You have already been made aware of your mission, and I know you have doubts of the morality of such an action. You need have no fear. In firing this shot, you will remove from the ranks of the Library one of our most difficult and dangerous traitors, one for whom there is no cure but death.
I do not give this order lightly, and I know you do not take it so. The Burners cry that a life is worth more than a book, but we know the truth: knowledge lives on. No single life can claim so much.
And so a man who threatens knowledge must be dealt with--by persuasion, by force, or, if all else fails, by death.
Blessings upon you from your god or gods, and from the hands of the Archivist Magister himself, who has approved this action.
HIS SEAL.
CHAPTER THREE
By the time he'd retrieved the Blake from his personal stash of rare books and delivered it to Anit in exchange for the cipher, it had been well into the dark hours of early morning. Then Jess spent hours poring over the contents of the book, writing out a translation page by careful page.
The results were startling, and he'd ached to keep going, but by the time his clock showed three in the morning, his eyes were too grainy to focus, his brain too numb to think. Jess finally admitted defeat and fell into bed, where he slept the sleep of the dead . . . until a pounding on his door resurrected him.
"Mup," he mumbled, and rolled sideways off his bunk. He desperately wanted to flop down again and die; his body felt nine kinds of sore from the trauma of the exercise the day before and the night's adventures. He hadn't had nearly enough sleep. The book, he thought, and grabbed for it and the sheaf of translated pages. He stuffed it into the smuggling harness, which was getting a good deal too crowded for safety, then threw on a robe to answer the summons.
Glain stood there, crisply uniformed, and she said, "Unplanned exercise. Get ready. It's our last one. Thirty minutes."
"Glain--" But she was already moving on to knock at another door. He'd hoped to find a moment to talk. But this wasn't the right one. Maybe that was better saved for after, when all this was done, and he could guide her more gently through the levels of shock, grief, and anger that he'd already experienced.
Dressed and fortified with a cup of sweet Egyptian coffee, he jogged with his squad to the training grounds and their assigned place to form up on the field. Other squads were coming, too, but none, Jess saw, had beaten them there.
Glain hadn't made the run with them.
She isn't here.
He realized that only as they formed their rank and stood at attention. It wasn't just unusual for Glain to be missing, it had never happened, and he exchanged a sidelong glance with the young man to his right--Tariq, who'd shot him the day before--without moving another muscle. Tariq seemed calm, but he was already sweating. The loud morning tone sounded from the top of the High Garda watchtower, and . . . Glain still didn't appear. Other squads were inspected and dismissed. Jess's group stood silent in the hot sun, at attention. If the others worried as much as he did, they were too well trained to speak.
Finally, Jess saw one of the Garda's armored carriers speeding across the ground; his eyes tracked it as it approached them. Glain Wathen jumped out almost before the hissing steam-powered vehicle came to a halt. She was followed by someone Jess recognized only slightly: High Garda Captain Feng, who was smiling this morning, though his eyes were like chips of cold black ice. Feng had never appeared on the parade ground before. Never interacted with their squad at all. He had quite a reputation as a hard man to please.
From the rank behind him, Jess heard someone take in a startled breath, but he concentrated on staying as still as he could. Feng's gaze--cold and impersonal--swept over each of them as he walked the rank. He gave Jess exactly the same assessment as the others, no longer or shorter, and said nothing until he reached the end of his inspection and returned, with Glain, to stand before them. He and the young squad leader were silhouetted by the merciless glow of the rising sun. It effectively hid their expressions.
"Scores," Feng said to Glain. She briskly unhooked the small waterproof box on her belt and snapped it open. Inside lay a Blank, a book connected to the Great Library's vast archives, though this was one whose cover shimmered with the Library's gold seal and the feather of Ma'at--her recording journal, which copied itself daily into a mirroring Blank on the shelves somewhere in the distant bowels of the High Commander's offices. Military issue.
Glain presented it to Feng with both hands, and he took it the same way--a sign of respect for the book itself, not for her. He paged through, reading her reports and notes, and then handed it back with the same care. "Well done, Sergeant Wathen," he said. "Well done, squad. Take ease."
That was a relief, and Jess heard a quiet sigh as they all spread their feet and relaxed their spines a bit. That was a mistake, as Feng continued, "You lead the roster in points, and, as such, we have decided to issue you a special test today, one that will challenge you to the level we wish you to achieve. Are you ready to excel, recruits?"
"Yes, sir!" they all responded at once and as one. Nobody had to feed them that response. Every member of Glain Wathen's squad was driven to excel, and their gods preserve them if they weren't. Glain added her own voice. She stood even taller, even straighter. She was in her element here.
Jess envied that. Right now, he desperately missed the quiet comfort of his books. This, he thought, is going to be hard. Feng hadn't set up a special challenge for them for the fun of it, and Jess had no doubt at all that it was going to be a brutal affair.
"Squad!" Glain called, and they all gave back a deep-chested "Sir," in response. Even Jess. "We lead by two points in the rankings. This is not enough. We will bring in this exercise with a comfortable five-point lead, and we will finish with the top score! Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir!" Jess barked, in unison with the rest. He wanted to finish this bloody training in first position as much as Glain did, but having attracted the attention of Captain Feng was a mixed blessing at best.
Feng walked slowly up and down the row, but he looked into the blank middle distance as he said, "Your assignment today is a confiscation. Your job will be to enter and search a home for contraband books, and, if found, tag and recover them for the Library. You may meet resistance. Be ready."
That sounded deceptively easy. Glain and Jess had been on real book-confiscation missions as postulants competing for their current positions; every person in the squad had qualified on situations much harder than this. In fact, it sounded so remedial that it was utterly out of place, given where they were in their training.
Jess shot a look to his right, where a Scandinavian girl named Helva stood at rigid attention. Helva's glancing look told him his unease was shared. Not right at all. If Glain thought the same, she gave no indication of it, but, then, she'd always had the best face for secrets that Jess had ever seen.
Glain swiveled to face her squad. "In the carrier," she said. "Move!"
They scrambled in. It was a tight fit, but the carrier was designed for a full squad and gear. Jess found his seat as the steam engine hissed and gears engaged to rattle the carrier forward. It picked up speed on the flat ground. No windows, so Jess couldn't tell where they were going except far and fast. The parade gro
und itself was enormous, and held close to twenty different environments and set pieces around the edges. He'd been in most of them during training, including one that doubled as a set for an Alexandrian street. He assumed that was where they were being driven.
He was wrong.
When the carrier jolted to a stop and the squad jumped out, Jess found they were at the farthest western edge of the High Garda compound: a restricted area near the edge of the field where trainees were not allowed to venture. Jess's misgivings twinged again as the squad lined up behind Glain's rod-straight form. Not right, he thought. The entire area was surrounded by a high stone wall with just one visible gate.
Behind them, the carrier's bubbling hiss rose to a gusting sigh as gears engaged again and it raced away. The tracks spat a long plume of sand over the squad. As Jess blinked grit away, a solid man in High Garda uniform with two Horus eyes on his collars--a full centurion in rank--looked them over with a bleak, unforgiving gaze. "All right," he said. "Gear to your right. Get it on. You have sixty seconds."
Jess joined the rush to the equipment piles off to the side. A High Garda flexible armored coat emblazoned on the back with the Library symbol, and a heavy black weapon. No reloads for it. Jess was all too familiar with the gun; he'd carried one in Oxford, when he was still a postulant. Even after all the practice he'd had with it over the past few months, it felt like a hot alien creature in his hands, unfamiliar and hostile.
It brought back such bad memories.
"Live rounds?" someone behind him asked as Jess checked his weapon.
"You have live stunning rounds and half-strength regular rounds," the centurion said. His accent had the lilt of southern Africa, Jess thought, and it matched with the burnished darkness of his skin. "They're still dangerous, so pick your targets and try not to kill each other."
Jess shook his head; they weren't beginners. They were a tight, trained squad now, and they'd all gotten to know how the others moved. He could pick up cues from body language through peripheral vision. They hadn't had a targeting mistake since the first week together. Well, except for that incident with Tariq, but that had been orders, not accident.