Paper and Fire

by Rachel Caine

  "You're not ready to rescue him yet. Are you?"

  "No," he admitted. "We're not even completely sure he's there. We keep looking for proof."

  "I wish I had more to tell you," she said. "I'll keep looking. I'm sure I can crack some more of the codes that the Artifex uses--" She broke off with a gasp and touched the collar at her neck. Her gaze met his and held.

  "They're coming," he said. She nodded.

  "I can't let them see you with me, or you'll be arrested. If I escaped and ran on my own, that's one thing, but the penalty for you . . ."

  "Maybe they'd put me in the cell beside Thomas. That's one way to do research."

  "It's not funny! Jess--" He kissed her. After a second of surprise, she kissed him back, warmth and sweetness and a frantic kind of passion that said more than words. And then she pushed him away. Hard. "Go now. They can't find you with me. Please, just go!"

  He turned and ran. When he looked back, he saw Morgan walking calmly to the opposite end of the block, where a steam carriage glided to a halt and armed High Garda poured out to surround her. She didn't fight them.

  Look back at me. Just look back, Morgan.

  She didn't.

  Jess waited all night for a Codex message from Morgan or Khalila or Dario.

  No messages came.

  By dawn, he was desperate enough to use his Codex to try to send a message himself, despite the fact that he knew it would be monitored. He tried Khalila first, then Dario, but neither replied. Something's happened, he thought, and the fear climbed his spine as if it were a ladder, to lodge cold in the back of his brain. They've been taken away. Or . . . or worse. Would the Archivist risk another tragic accident in a matter of days? Or would he simply have them vanish, and make up whatever story he needed to pacify their loved ones?

  Jess imagined how that polite, pretty fiction would sound in his case. The Archivist's sorrowful letter would arrive in formal calligraphy, and it wouldn't tell the truth, like, Your son was dismembered by an automaton--so sorry, but talk of some quiet, mundane death. Illness, probably. He morbidly pictured the scene back at home, where his mother and father would receive news of his death with the same quiet stoicism they'd used to greet the death of his older brother, Liam. Maybe Brendan would actually be sorry to lose him.

  Just as he was trying to decide whether his father would shed any tears, his Codex flashed a message. His High Garda orders had arrived. This morning, he was to report to Captain Niccolo Santi's company, which would become his permanent assignment for the next year. He stared at it for a long, strange moment, wondering what in God's name the Archivist intended by granting him what he'd wanted, and was startled out of his chair when someone knocked loudly on his door.

  Glain stood outside, and when he opened up, she thrust her open Codex in his face. "Santi," she said. He silently held up his own orders. "What does this mean?"

  "I don't know," he said. "Nothing good." He told her about Dario and Khalila, and Glain paled under the deep tan she'd acquired. "We need to go to the Lighthouse."

  "We can't," she said, and pointed to his orders again. He'd stopped reading after seeing Santi's name, but she was right: there was more. "We're ordered to report for duty. Now."

  He and Glain made it to the parade ground just in time and were intercepted by someone Jess recognized: the centurion who'd helped them on the exercise ground, when Helva had been hurt and Tariq killed. Centurion Botha.

  There was no recognition or even interest on Botha's face as he stepped into their path. "Orders," he snapped, and Glain briskly flipped her Codex open to show them. Jess followed a second after. Botha examined them and the imprint of seals embossed under, and shoved the books back into their hands. "Century Two, Blue Squad. Report to your squad leader."

  Over Botha's shoulder, Jess saw Captain Santi, who was listening to a lieutenant intently. He looked very different now from the man who'd been defending Wolfe; all traces of that emotion had vanished, and he wore command like an invisible crown. No time for mere new recruits.

  Glain had already saluted Botha and turned away, and Jess quickly followed suit and moved off at a lope after her. They both knew the standard configurations of a company, and finding Century Two, then Blue Squad, was simple enough. The squad leader there watched the two of them step into formation with cool, judgmental eyes. "Nice new uniforms, recruits," he said. "Don't worry. We'll beat the creases right out of them. Welcome to Blue Squad."

  Around them, the other members of the squad gave a deep-throated bark in unison. The squad leader smiled. "Also known as the Blue Dogs. I've looked at your scores. Not bad. We'll expect better, of course."

  The young man--two or three years ahead of us, Jess thought, but with the air of someone twice his age--turned with that very brief greeting and walked to take his place in the rank, at the far right of their squad. Jess, standing on the end of the line, had a good view of the platform where Santi stood. He was gathered now with his centurions, and at his nod, the centurions jumped down to walk the ranks.

  Botha had a voice loud enough to carry halfway to China, and he used it to full effect to shout, "Century Two, report by squad to supply wagon and reform! Fast and orderly!"

  Instantly, the first squad in the century peeled off and ran to a supply carrier that was parked not far away; Jess tried to watch them without turning his head, but got little but a headache for his trouble. It took just under five minutes for each squad to run over and return, and he realized that they were picking up weapons and travel packs.

  Travel packs.

  As they jogged to the supplies, he managed to whisper to Glain, "We're on the move. Did you know--"

  "No," she snapped. "Shut up."

  "But what about Dario and Khalila--"

  "Shut up!"

  It was the work of seconds to grab weapons from the hands of the armorers, plus a travel pack; Jess wasn't used to putting one on quite so quickly, but he managed to get the buckles fastened and be back in the Blue Dog line with only a slight delay. It earned him a lean-out stare from the squad leader. He kept himself at perfect attention until the other young man looked away.

  He burned to ask where they were going, but he was now, officially, High Garda, and High Garda soldiers didn't ask. Glain had done him a favor by insisting he pack his personal journal and wear his smuggling harness with his stolen books inside. He'd never go back to his room in the recruit barracks. When he came back, the few belongings he had left would be moved to new quarters in the regular company barracks. He was, finally, in his place. Everything to this point, Jess realized, had still felt like preparation--like schoolwork, not life. But now, in full battle uniform, wearing the heavy weight of the pack and loaded down with weapons he knew he would have to use, it all felt . . . different. More ominously real. This is my place. This is my life. The weapons were live and lethal, and he would be expected to use them.

  Dario and Khalila. We've lost them. He couldn't leave Alexandria without knowing where they were, what had happened. He'd thought they would have time to find out, but now . . . now they were being sent out without warning. Maybe to battle.

  Hard not to flash back to Oxford and the terrible war that had overtaken them there as they rescued books and librarians. Jess had spent months fighting back nightmares in which he saw the slaughter, the desperation, saw his fellow postulant Joachim Portero die. It had been a cruel and terribly real introduction to the chaos that the Great Library had been built to guard against. During that chaos, it had been hard to see the Library as a villain, though he knew very well that the Library was no stranger to death, oppression, and cruelty. The Library had taken Thomas. Walled up Morgan. Separated him from everything he'd come to care about. Now they might have stolen away two of his remaining friends, too.

  The idea that he was supposed to fight for it was obscene. He wondered how Santi stood it, knowing what he knew.

  A line of carriers rolled up in a hiss of white steam, and one by one, Blue Dog squad received an
inspection not from Santi himself, but from one of his top lieutenants, a round-faced woman with startling greenish eyes in a very dark face. Those eyes missed nothing, and when they lingered over Jess and his pack, he felt a chill. "You," the lieutenant said, and gestured to him. "Come with me."

  Glain broke from her rigid attention to send Jess a startled glance as he followed the lieutenant out of ranks to a spot at the back of the carrier. A thick white wisp of steam left a damp streak across his face as it drifted past, and the lingering smell of bitter metal. "Is there a problem, sir?"

  The lieutenant fixed those intimidating eyes on him. "You're Brightwell," she said. "Correct?"

  "Yes, sir." He felt sweat trickle down the side of his face. "Problem, sir?"

  She leaned forward suddenly, and it was all he could do not to flinch. She didn't blink as she stared into his eyes from a distance close enough that their noses nearly brushed. "You're acquainted with Captain Santi."

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Then know this: if you presume on prior acquaintance, I will end you. Is that understood? You speak to Captain Santi when spoken to by him. You will not approach him. You will not send him messages. There is a chain of command, and you are the link at the ass end of it." Every word was as bright and sharp as a razor, and she never blinked. "If I catch a whisper of a rumor to the contrary, I will destroy you. Understood, Brightwell?"

  He sucked in a breath and said, "Understood, sir!"

  "Good." She held there another beat, then drew back and nodded. "I've been instructed to tell you to stop looking for your friends. They're safe. That comes directly from the captain himself, and if I hear you've stepped over that line, I'll destroy you twice over. Now fall in." She gestured sharply to the squad leader, and he counted off as each of the squad members lunged up into the carrier. Jess climbed in, as promised, last. The ass end of the chain, just as the lieutenant had said, but he couldn't shake the other part of her message.

  They're safe. Santi had said so. What did that mean? Had Dario and Khalila gone into hiding? Had they come under some kind of threat? Can't ask. It was going to kill him to resist.

  He tried to focus on the other soldiers in the carrier. Apart from Glain, he knew none of them, and not a single face seemed familiar or even friendly. The seats were arrayed facing each other in two rows, with space between for packs, and Jess struggled to unbuckle his and lay it in the assigned space between his boots.

  The carrier lurched into motion, throwing him against the deep, padded seat. Circulating cool air only cut the heat but didn't defeat it, and didn't hide the smell embedded in this vehicle: sweat, blood, a whiff of old fear. The smell of battle. It took him back to Oxford, and he felt cold despite the heat.

  "What did the gold band want?" Glain asked, and Jess realized that she was right: the lieutenant had been wearing a gold band, a career appointment. He hadn't noticed until Glain brought it to mind.

  "Nothing." He couldn't tell her, not here. She seemed to accept that and nodded.

  "Well, you do know a good deal about nothing, so that makes sense."

  "Where do you think we're going?" There had been enough carriers pulled up to move Santi's entire company--and that, he thought, wasn't normal. Usually squads were sent out, or, more rarely, centuries. Even heading to Oxford, Santi had taken only a half century as escort. Taking the whole company meant real trouble.

  "The hot spots are in England," the man across from Jess said. He was older, with a dust of gray in his dark blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. The accent was familiar--English, Jess thought. Manchester, maybe. "The Welsh are still pushing up toward London."

  "We're not going to England," said a shorter man next to him. "We're heading to Rome."

  Rome. Jess felt his heartbeat speed up and he couldn't stop a look at Glain, who maintained her usual mask of cool indifference. "Why?" she asked. "Is Rome about to fall to the Welsh, too?" She made sure, in saying it, that her native Welsh accent was on full display.

  There was a ripple of laughter. The Englishman across from Jess didn't crack a smile, and there was a dark look in his eyes. Easy, Jess thought. These aren't our friends. They're trained killers.

  "I heard the Artifex Magnus is inspecting the Serapeum there," someone else offered. There were nods and more serious expressions; they all knew the Artifex was a prime target for the Burners, who were the principal enemy they had to fear these days.

  The Artifex was also the red right hand of the Archivist. He might not be the second most powerful in the Library--that honor went to Wolfe's mother, the Obscurist Magnus--but the Artifex ran a close third. If the Archivist ordered someone dead, it was the Artifex who arranged for the murder.

  And they would be guarding him from threats. Ironic.

  Jess shut his eyes for a moment, ignoring the chatter around him, and then reached in his bag and pulled out his Codex. He opened it to a specific page, the page where Morgan's messages appeared, and took out a stylus. He wrote down, in flowing, tight letters, They're sending us to Rome. Is it a trap? Please answer. I need you to answer. Please.

  The words stayed for a moment and then faded away. The page was blank.

  The page stayed blank.

  "Put that away," the man across from him said. "No messages on missions."

  Jess should have known that. He nodded and put the Codex away, and tried to hope that being sent to Rome was just some lucky, happy coincidence.

  He was too cynical to believe it for long.

  "On your feet!"

  Jess hadn't realized he'd slept until the squad leader's shout roared over him, amplified by the very suddenness of it; he jerked awake and was up fast enough that he banged his head on the low ceiling of the carrier. It had stopped moving, though he could feel the faint vibration of the steam engine still working. The impact was hard enough to make his vision spark, and the pain radiated through the top of his head like an acid bath, but he grimly stumbled out after Glain, into what proved to be a heavily walled courtyard large enough to hold all the vehicles and the soldiers disembarking from them, but only just. Overhead, the sky had turned a teal that told him twilight was approaching, the day well gone. He'd slept a long time. He supposed he'd needed it, but he'd missed meals and--most important now--a latrine.

  Wherever they were, it wasn't Rome, but it also didn't feel like Alexandria. On the smooth surface of the courtyard there were drifts of fine dirt that crunched under his boots as he turned to see the soaring structure of a pyramid-shaped building. A Serapeum, a daughter branch of the Library. This one was made of searingly white stone, with a slice of gold at the top that he realized, on squinting, was a spire holding up the Library's seal. The shadows drowning half the courtyard seemed deeper than usual.

  He formed up with the squad, and the Blue Dog squad leader--he still didn't know the young man's name--moved quickly down the line to inspect them. He was shorter than Jess but radiated a commanding presence that made Jess straighten just a bit more.

  "Where are we, sir?" That was Glain, surprisingly.

  Even more surprisingly, the squad leader seemed willing to answer. "We're at the port city of Darnah. Ships are waiting to take most of the company, but we lucky few will be going on with the captain directly."

  "Directly," Glain said. "You mean by Translation."

  The squad leader grinned, dispelling all his years and authority in one flash of teeth . . . and then getting it back in the next instant as he said, "Exactly what I mean. Move. Consider this an honor. We're in the advance guard of the Artifex Magnus today."

  The arrogant old man was making Niccolo Santi guard him. It was a deliberate insult; there was no doubt of that. The Artifex had been the one to take Wolfe to prison and oversee his . . . conversion, just as he'd taken Thomas. It had to be a constant struggle for Santi not to shoot the bastard in the back.

  If Santi can stand it, I can, Jess told himself. He tightened the straps on his pack and followed Glain down the wide tunnel that ran at a slant b
eneath the Serapeum.

  No doubt parts of this vast pyramid were devoted to spacious, beautiful areas where the public could browse the Codex and load up Blanks with texts; librarians would be working, serene and helpful. A Scholar or two might be conducting his own research in a secret archive of local documents. There would be reading spaces, light, and beautiful views from the windows. That would be the public face of the Library, the one that even Jess had always known.

  That was not the Library he saw here in the tunnels. As the majority of Santi's troops continued down the stone-walled hall beneath the pyramid and headed for the docks, Santi led them off to the right, down a narrower passage lit by flickering glows above. The glows were chemical, an older style, and sputtered unsteadily with a greenish cast to them. It made all the faces of Jess's companions seem eerily lifeless.

  Not a thing to think about before Translation. The last time he'd been through this, he'd seen a classmate die and one broken by it. But he'd survived it once, and knew he could again. I am a soldier now, he told himself. Soldiers take risks.

  The group accompanying Santi consisted of the green-eyed lieutenant whom he'd sent to intimidate Jess, their squad, and another, more seasoned group of veterans who seemed totally at ease with the situation. One of them, a man who seemed ancient to Jess but was in reality about his father's age, caught sight of Jess's face and laughed. "Don't worry, boy, you'll come through in one piece," the soldier said, and shoved him ahead through an open set of double doors. "Might not enjoy the trip, but at least we travel in style here. Seen a lot worse!"

  The old soldier was right. This was far different from the Translation Chambers Jess had seen in Alexandria and in their last arrival point in England. The one in Alexandria had seemed chaotically full of machinery, steam, pipes, gears, sparks. It had felt at once ancient, untidy, and unfinished. Maybe it had been under repair.

  The one in England had seemed bare and grubby. He'd have expected Alexandria to have the best of everything, but as he stepped into this Translation room in Darnah, he was struck by how sleek it was. The floor was bare stone, cool beneath his boots. The ceiling stretched high, and what machinery was visible was only glimpsed behind barriers or rafters above. A single bronzed cable dropped down from the unseen machinery to hang down in a circle of light, in which lay a curved, reclining chair made of the same stone as the floor, with a metal helmet next to it.