Paper and Fire

by Rachel Caine

  "Jess!" Morgan's scream pierced the fog like the Lighthouse's focused beam, and he scrambled out of the way as the Spartan thrust down again. The spear tore through the leg of his uniform trousers and grazed his flesh; he felt skin part, but again, no pain. The spear's tip was too sharp to hurt, like a Medica's scalpel. He was seconds from dying and he knew it. All he could do was scramble and try to estimate where an engineer, a good engineer like Thomas, would have placed the safety switch for this particular design. He didn't know. It looked like a man, taller and broader and faster than a man. The face under the Spartan helmet was unmoving, as uncaring as any beast. It won't bite, at least, he thought. The mouth was half-hidden under the helmet . . .

  The helmet? No, too high up. He'd never reach it. If he tried any approach from the front, he'd be killed before he could even try a switch, if one even existed in a spot he could find.

  He was going to die. Maybe he'd known that from the first moment he'd seen the Spartan automaton on the High Garda grounds. He remembered feeling a shiver of premonition about it.

  His brain was racing like a river in full flood, uncontrollable in its search for some way to survive. It directed his body without conscious thought, rolling, diving, scrambling on all fours like a crab, and when the Spartan lifted one sandaled foot to crush him, he remembered something.

  Something from a favorite book he'd read a dozen times as a child. Talos, the bronze titan who fought Jason and his men aboard the Argo. A metal man who could not be hurt, could not be defeated.

  Talos had been stopped by the removal of a plug at his heel, which had drained away the vital fluid that moved him. So the story went.

  The engineers who'd designed the Spartan had read the same stories, dreamed the same dreams.

  Jess hit the ground behind the Spartan and reached out blindly for the backs of the statue's legs with both hands, sliding fingers down the unnaturally warm bronze. It twisted around, shifting position to spear him like a fish. He saw the head tilting down toward him. The spear lifting.

  His hand found a slight depression in the metal of the automaton's heel on the left side, and he pressed in with his thumb and rolled aside, gasping for breath, hoping he'd not just killed himself.

  It was just as well he moved, because the Spartan retained enough power to bring the spear down one last time, hard enough to pierce the stone where Jess had been lying. It would have pierced his skull just as easily. He heard the whine of the gears inside grinding to a stop, the springs unwinding, and felt a surge of weakness that nearly put him down flat again. Then he felt giddy. He'd just become the world's foremost criminal expert in stopping Library automata. That was worth something on the open market, surely.

  "You're bleeding," Morgan said, and reached down a hand. He checked the floor around him, and, yes, he was, but not badly. A rain, not a flood. He grabbed hold and let her haul him to his feet, and then hung on to her for steadiness as the hallway rocked and spun around them. "Can you walk, Jess?"

  "I can walk." He wasn't sure, but it was something to aspire to. "I'm all right." He wasn't. Definitely wasn't. "Let go."

  "No," she said, and there was no arguing with the way she said it. "Why is it that you're always hurt when I find you? Is that my fault?"

  He wanted to laugh, but the fog was clearing, and in its place pain had taken up a steady, red throb. Laughter would split his skull in two. "We need to find Thomas."

  "I know," Morgan said, and her strong arm around his waist helped him find his balance again. "Come on."

  The third High Garda soldier they'd expected was down by the time Jess and Morgan arrived. Santi glanced at them, but then his gaze locked on Jess and the blood. "Are you all right?" It was only half concern. The other half of the question had to do with the viability of their escape if he wasn't.

  "I'm fine," Jess said, though he knew he wasn't. "I won't hold you back."

  "Stop chattering," Wolfe said, his tone as cold and bitter as winter. "Jess. Locks."

  For a blank second, Jess didn't understand his order, and then he fumbled for his picklocks and moved past the men to the door of the cell.

  "Jess," said a quiet voice from beyond the bars. It sounded rough and strange, somehow familiar, and when he finally looked straight into the cell, he saw his best friend, Thomas Schreiber, sitting on the floor of the stone room. He was shackled to a metal ring in the wall. The big, young man had lost weight, which somehow made him seem larger without that comfortable layer of padding. He no longer looked as young and innocent as Jess remembered. He'd grown a beard, and his hair was a matted mess down to his shoulders. He was dressed in a plain oatmeal-colored shirt and trousers that were much worse for wear.

  Jess wrapped his hands around the bars, partly to keep himself from falling as dizziness hit him, and said, "Got yourself in a mess, haven't you, Thomas?"

  "Jess," Thomas whispered. Even with the beard, the hair, the changes in him, his smile remained gentle and kind. His eyes had an odd shine to them, and it took Jess a moment to realize it was tears. "They took our machine. They destroyed it."

  "Never mind. You can build another," Jess said. His throat felt tight and his eyes burned until he blinked his own tears away. No time for that nonsense now. "Let's get you out of there."

  He bent to the lock, but his fingers felt clumsy and his reasoning felt suspiciously slow. I have to do this, he thought. I have to get him out.

  And then Khalila tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a ring of keys. "From the last guard," she said.

  Maybe I do have a cracked skull, he thought, and almost laughed. Three tries before he slid the key into the lock, and then the catch clicked open with a crisp sound that seemed to echo around the stones. Jess heard his friends letting out held breaths, and grinned despite the ache in his head and shoulder. He swung the door open and rushed in to kneel next to Thomas.

  He had to pause, because Thomas was looking down at him, holding out his shackled hand. "It's good to see you, Jess," Thomas said, and his voice faltered. It sounded different now. Tears blurred his eyes. "Mein Gott, I thought--I never thought you'd really come. I didn't think any of you knew. They told me . . ."

  His voice faded away. Jess ignored the hand and grabbed him into a hard, fast hug. Best Thomas couldn't see his face. Then he went back to the work of freeing him from the chains.

  Scholar Wolfe was still outside the bars, and Jess realized he probably couldn't bear the idea of stepping inside ever again. Wolfe said, "They told you we were all dead, didn't they?"

  Jess felt Thomas nod wearily, and blotted moisture from his eyes with the back of his sleeve as he worked the stubborn lock. Until this moment, he'd thought of Thomas in the abstract, just as he'd last seen him. Unchanged. Seeing what they'd made of him brought things home in ways imagination couldn't.

  "They described it," Thomas said. "For every one of you. How you died. I tried not to believe it, but . . . but it's hard not to here. This becomes all you know."

  "They lie." Wolfe's voice sounded low and silky, dark as midnight. "It's their favorite tactic--I know it well--to break your mind and your spirit. I'm sorry it took so long to get to you."

  "If we'd tried to come earlier, the lies might well have become true," Santi said, just as Jess clicked the last shackle open. He winced when he saw how raw Thomas's ankle was beneath.

  "Can you walk?" Jess asked. Thomas, for answer, stood up. And even though Jess knew how tall his friend was, it surprised him to see him towering over them again.

  "Of course," Thomas said, and then tried to take a step and had to grab Jess for balance. "Slowly."

  Santi's expression didn't change, but it was clear slowly wasn't an answer he wanted to hear in strategic terms. Their time was running out fast. "Then let's go," he said. "As fast as we can."

  "Wait!" Thomas turned to look at the walls of his room, and for the first time, Jess realized they were densely covered with small, scratched drawings in Thomas's precise hand. Machines. Automata. He'd drawn w
hat looked like one of the Roman lions, then drawn it as if it had exploded into pieces, each one shown in context with the skeletal frame. "I need to remember these! I have to remember. I didn't have anything else to work with--they wouldn't give me any paper . . ."

  "No time, Thomas. We need to move," Glain said. "They're coming." There was a note of tension in her voice that convinced Jess instantly, and he pulled Thomas toward the door. There would be no moving the young man if he really wanted to resist, but Thomas went, although reluctantly, still turned to memorize his drawings. Once out of the cell, though, Thomas turned to the front, put his back against the bars, and sucked down a deep, trembling breath, as though for the first time it was dawning on him that they were here, it was not a dream, and he was actually free.

  All of Jess's pulling wouldn't move him.

  "Thomas?" He kept his voice quiet, firm, and calm. "We can't stop here. The Garda are coming, and they will put us all in those cells. We have to go."

  "I know," Thomas said. He closed his eyes and then opened them, and they'd taken on a blind, hard shine. "It isn't an illusion, is it? You're here. This is real."

  "Yes. It's real."

  Thomas was silently weeping, and Jess wanted to hurt someone responsible for that. Badly.

  "Keep going," Jess called to Santi, who was taking the lead with Glain. "There's a round metal plate in the floor that used to be a drain. Find it and burn through. That puts us in the sewer underneath. I've marked the way for once we're down there. Oh, and there's a lion. I hope it's still stopped. I took care of it last night." Strange that it seemed the least of their worries at the moment.

  "Another one?" Khalila turned, eyes wide. "How long have you known how to do that?"

  "Since the night Dario almost got me killed at Alexander's tomb," he said. "Ask him."

  She whipped around to do just that, but Dario held up his hand to stop her. "Later, desert flower, for mercy's sake," Dario said before she could begin the interrogation. "I know your curiosity is stronger than your sense of self-preservation, but I still don't know how he did it, by the way. I ran for my life like any sensible person."

  "Jess didn't run!"

  "And that proves my point."

  Wolfe turned on them in a storm of black robes and bitter, angry eyes. He was, Jess thought, all but shattering down here, in this place where he couldn't shut out the memories of his time behind these bars. "Do you think this is a game?"

  Even Dario fell silent at the vicious tone and, more than that, the way Wolfe's voice broke in the middle. He was trembling. Sweat shone hot on his face, though it was cave-cool down here. Santi--still on alert--reached back and put a hand on his arm, and Wolfe dragged in a tortured breath and nodded.

  "Are there others?" Jess asked Thomas. "More prisoners here?"

  "Yes," Thomas said quietly. He was watching Wolfe as if he understood him perfectly. As if he was watching himself. "A few. Most don't stay long. They--they're taken away."

  "Released?" Morgan asked.

  Thomas shook his head. Jess didn't want to ask any more.

  They were hurrying along now and keeping their voices low. Jess heard nothing behind them yet, but he was sure pursuit would be coming fast. The prison was larger than he'd thought and stretched in a long, straight hallway of cells, some occupied, and he couldn't look inside, couldn't, for fear he'd see the face of someone he knew staring out. Khalila had, just ahead of him. She'd stopped, grabbed the bars of a cell, and was looking inside. When she turned to Jess, her eyes were blind with tears. "We have to let them out," she said. "Please. Help--"

  He took out the keys, but his hands were trembling. Nearly useless. Focus, he told himself, but he wasn't sure he could. It was all too much, too fast. Dario silently took the keys and tried them, one after another. The desperate person behind the bars didn't seem to care. It was impossible for Jess to tell the gender or age; it was just a dark shape huddled in a corner against the wall, chained as Thomas had been.

  The keys didn't work.

  "Maybe they're on one of the other guards. I'll get them," Dario said, and went back the way they'd come. He didn't get far before he reversed course and came back fast. "No time," he said. "They're coming. Go. Go!"

  "But--" Khalila looked absolutely tormented. Dario took her by the arms and pulled her away from the cell. "No, we can't--"

  "We must." He held on when she tried to yank away. "Khalila. Querida. Look at me. We can't help them if we're all dead!"

  He was right. It hurt, and he was right, and Jess finally dared to look into the cell, into the face of the one they were leaving behind.

  He didn't know the man. That was a terrible relief, and then a terrible guilt, too. "I'm sorry," he said, and helped Thomas as they followed Dario and Khalila down the hall.

  He didn't look in any of the other cells. Wasn't sure he could stand it.

  The left turn ahead dumped them into a large, circular room with age-scrubbed frescoes on the walls. It was lined with . . . What were these things? Mechanical devices. Jess tried not to think what they were intended to do, but the spikes, straps, wheels, gears made it all too evident once he focused on the evil things.

  It was a torture chamber.

  There were no exits.

  Jess froze for a moment, thinking, What did I just do? But then he pushed past the others into the center of the room. This was the right place; he knew it was. This chamber was a perfect round replica of the one below their feet, off the sewers. But there was no sign of any metal plate in the floor.

  It has to be here, he thought, and pushed aside the thudding headache to concentrate. His eyes fixed on a device in the middle of the room.

  "Here! Move this!" he said, and pushed at a particularly large construction that looked like a bed, but with gears and ropes and straps stained with old blood. The stench of it--of the whole room--made his throat close up, but he gritted his teeth and shoved, and Santi and Dario joined him. The machine moved with a long, agonizing screech of metal on metal--because it had been partially blocking the round metal plate set in the center of the floor. The plate was stamped with the screaming face of a monster with snakes for hair--a Gorgon. Ancient work. It had been sealed for a very long time.

  Santi removed the Codex from his belt and--to Jess's surprise--dropped it on the ground before he took a sealed, padded bottle from his pack and said, "Leave your Codices here. Stand back."

  Jess hadn't thought of it, but Santi was right, of course; the Codex that was so familiar a tool to him could be used against them. It could be tracked, couldn't it? The Archivist would have Obscurists on it in moments. Morgan had already dropped hers, and so had Wolfe. Jess put his down on the floor, obscurely careful about it, and watched as Glain did the same. It took Khalila and Dario far longer to decide to let go of this last tangible symbol of the Library; Khalila put hers down reverently, as if it might break, and whispered something that sounded to him like a prayer as she pressed her fingertips to the cover.

  Then Santi opened the bottle and poured the thick greenish contents over the stack of books. They flared up into a brilliant pyre, and Jess pulled Thomas and Morgan back from the billowing toxic smoke. We're Burners, Jess thought, stricken. Now we're Burners.

  Through the hanging pall of smoke, as he started to cough, he saw Santi take out two more bottles and pour them over the Gorgon face of the metal plate. This time it didn't burn; it bubbled as it distorted the Gorgon's snarl into a slack-mouthed scream, and then hissed and melted it away altogether. The plate was thick, but the chemicals would do the job . . . if they had time.

  Jess heard sounds from the hallway. He moved toward the opening, and what started as distant running footsteps rapidly came closer. They were still in the other corridor, fast approaching the sharp corner. He exchanged a look with Glain, and without a word spoken, they moved to take up positions. He was, by common consent, the better shot, and before anyone appeared at the intersection, let loose a short burst of lethal projectile fire that chewed
head-high holes in the old stonework. An explicit warning to the troops around the corner. In the next second, before the echoes died, he switched the weapon back to a stun setting--enough to put someone down, he hoped, if he scored a good shot. From his angle, he'd get the first pick of targets, and Glain would clean up.

  The first man to the corner was Blue Squad leader Rollison. Troll threw himself into the opening with fearless disregard for his own safety, maybe hoping that Jess would hesitate to fire, but Jess didn't: he planted his shot precisely on target, into the armor just above Troll's stomach. It would, he vividly remembered, knock the wind right out of a man.

  Troll dropped like a suit of empty clothes, mouth open as he gagged for air. Glain got the next soldier to appear, Jess the third. The rest hesitated and dragged their injured comrades back to cover.

  "We're through," Santi said from behind them. "Glain, get down to the next level. Go. Now."

  "I'd rather hold this position, sir."

  "I need you to be sure our escape route's secure. Take Wolfe with you and don't let him resist."

  Before either of them could protest, Santi walked right past them into the opening. Into the hallway. Glain hesitated, then--as she would, being Glain--followed orders, grabbing Wolfe and pushing him toward the open dark hole in the floor.

  Jess took in a deep breath and focused on Santi, who was putting his own life on the line to buy time. He raised his weapon to provide what cover he could, though if anyone on the other end decided to rain fire, Santi wouldn't survive.

  Captain Santi strode halfway down the hall and called out, "Zara?"

  There was a short silence, and then Santi's lieutenant--the green-eyed woman--stepped around to face him, with her gun pointed squarely at his chest. "Sir," she said. "What do you think you're doing?"

  "You know what I'm doing. You saw the cells. Don't tell me you agree with what they do here. What we do here. The Library is us. We allow this to happen, Zara."

  "Whether I agree with it or not, I can't let you take prisoners out of custody! There are ways we can make protests. Channels for--"

  "Do you really think that the people who made this place care about protests or channels or laws? Come here and look, Zara. Look at what they do."