Paper and Fire

by Rachel Caine

  Her eyes blazed an intense, bright white, and she roared and threw herself into the fight, a fight she couldn't possibly win, and he knew he was killing her as well. He felt like a monster.

  Thomas pulled him through the doorway, and he lost sight of Frauke just as her jaws closed around the paw of the other lion and yanked; metal ripped, cables shredded, gears scattered. Dark fluids spilled like blood. She's winning, he thought, but in the next instant, another Library lion, red eyes glowing hellishly bright, landed on Frauke's back and dug claws in.

  The embattled first lion closed its jaws over Frauke's throat.

  Jess looked away, but he couldn't help but hear the heavy crunch of the bite or the hissing spray of liquids, or the high-pitched metallic shriek that couldn't have been one of pain, but that was how it sounded to him, like pain, as Frauke died.

  Then he was across the threshold and couldn't see anymore. He heard screaming and panic, and realized that the Serapeum was full of innocent people and more lions were coming.

  Wolfe rushed for a control lever by the door and pulled it. The doors began to crank shut, and almost closed before a lion got a paw between them. Metal shrieked and bent. The doors didn't quite close. They shuddered as a lion's body hit, and then another.

  "Stay out of the way!" Santi shouted to the bystanders. "Get against the walls! Don't get in the way when they come in. You're in no danger if you stay out of the way!"

  The civilians were already following that wise advice, cowering in corners or near bookcases. The sound of the lions battering at the door, clawing, screaming echoed from the marble walls and floors as Wolfe took the lead, running across the broad, open central hall toward the far end of the Serapeum. The building passed in a blur for Jess, who finally was feeling his body again--not that it was a blessing--and got his feet working to move under his own power. Nothing was broken, at least, though he'd be aching badly tomorrow. He had an impression of a vast, columned hall lined with row upon row of shelves--a whole section of precious originals sealed under glass, available only to authorized Scholars, but open shelves lined with prefilled Blanks, or ones ready to be filled. Podiums held giant, permanently affixed Codex volumes. Roman statues graced alcoves, and for a bad moment he imagined those marble maidens and lads stepping down to grab them, but they were just statues, after all.

  Wolfe made it to the door, but it was fixed with a heavy lock. Jess pushed forward and fumbled for his tools; his head wasn't clear, and it seemed to take forever for his fingertips to begin to sense the vibrations of the metal pins.

  Somehow, despite the tension, the others managed not to yell at him, and he was grateful for the concentration. At last he felt the lock snap under his fingers and the door sag open. He moved through and held it open for the others, and at the far end of the Serapeum, one of the double doors shrieked and fell and a Roman lion bounded through and skidded on the marble floor, roaring.

  "Go!" Jess shouted, though they hardly needed encouragement. Santi came through first, ready to shoot any opposition, but the hall was empty for the moment. Glain stepped through last, still facing back toward the Serapeum's hallway as the lions crowded in. Jess slammed the door shut and locked it as the first of the pride fixed a red gaze in their direction.

  Then they were running through the empty halls of the basilica. Jess managed to keep up without help, though he felt Morgan next to him, anxiously steadying him when he faltered. "I'm fine," he told her, and she sent him a breathless, disbelieving look. "You were right about the lion. I'm sorry I couldn't--"

  "It wasn't your fault," she said, and her hand slipped into his. The warm touch of her hand pushed back the pain a little. "Come on, Jess. Just a little farther."

  Santi led them through a maze of corridors, avoiding High Garda patrols responding to the summons from the Serapeum, and Jess recognized where they were now: the hallways close to where he and Glain, a lifetime ago, had begun their patrol. "It'll be guarded," he told Glain, and she nodded. "Don't hesitate to shoot, no matter who it is."

  "I won't," she said, and moved up to run with Santi. They rounded a last corner, and there, halfway down the long hall, lay the statue of Pluto with the hidden entrance behind him, and a group of five soldiers in front.

  Blue Dogs--their own squad. Jess recognized the Englishman with the beard and a few of the others, and it hit him like a sick jolt.

  Someone shouted, and the Blue Dog soldiers all turned to face them. One of them fired, but it was a wild shot and dug gouges from the stone above and behind them. Santi and Glain fired back, and Jess managed to get his own weapon up, too. Two of the soldiers dropped immediately, and another one followed in the next second, but the two on the left abandoned the open hallway and took cover. "Glain, Jess, with me!" Santi shouted, and they pelted forward. Another shot came their way, and this one wasn't wild at all; it was well-placed, accurate, and hit Glain in the meaty part of her thigh. She cried out and went down, and Jess blinked at the splash of bright red blood left on the wall where she'd been. He dragged her up and pressed her behind the statue of Juno, then ran after Santi, who'd activated the secret entrance behind Pluto. He skidded to a halt and aimed at the soldiers who had already lined up on Santi's back.

  One shot, and missed, but Jess didn't. He placed his shots carefully, and both men dropped.

  Santi looked angry and ill with it. "Get them in," he said. "Look after Glain. We still have to take the Translation Chamber, and there may be more guarding it . . ." His voice trailed off, and his eyes fixed somewhere beyond Jess, toward the other end of the tunnel.

  Jess heard a ringing, echoing roar.

  He turned his head to see the Roman lion--the one he'd turned off on their way to rescue Thomas--racing toward them in a flat-out run, claws digging into the stone floor of the hallway as it ran, and flinging up chips behind it. His weapon wouldn't matter to it, not at all, and from the tenor of the roar and the red shine of its eyes, it didn't intend to take them prisoner. It would crush them, rip them, leave them bloody rags on the stones.

  He heard Santi's quiet sigh behind him and recognized the resignation in it. Santi was giving up.

  Jess damn well wasn't.

  He dropped his gun and, as Morgan and Khalila ducked through the opening, with Glain held up between them, he went straight at the lion at a run. Not this time, he thought. This time I won't miss. He couldn't. They were in the path now, and the lion would crush them all, Scholars and Obscurists and High Garda alike. They were now enemies, and enemies had no safety.

  Now.

  He flung himself forward into a tight ball and rolled, slammed his legs down flat to stop himself as the lion passed over him, and then he was up, behind it, as it passed him.

  "Jess!" Morgan screamed. She thought it had trampled him, and, near enough, he'd felt one paw graze his shoulder and leave a massive bruise, but he was alive. And now he grabbed hold of the automaton's whipping tail, careful of the barb at the end, and swung himself up on the broad, muscular back.

  It was like riding a storm. The lion reacted instantly to the pressure, twisting and writhing, slamming against the wall; he dodged the barbed tail that tried to spear him from behind and locked his arms around the massive neck before he swung his legs off and let momentum throw him forward. For a second he was dangling from the lion, and his head wedged in under the lion's jaw, preventing it from biting.

  Now.

  He let go, and as he fell, he stabbed his fingertips up onto the switch. It gave with a sharp click, and then he hit the floor and scrambled backward as the lion lunged at him, snapping its jaws.

  It came to a frozen halt a handbreadth from his face.

  "Dio mio!" Santi said, lapsing just for a moment into his native Italian, and then recovered a second later to lunge forward, grab Jess, and drag him backward to his feet. For just a moment, the captain looked at him with silent approval, and then he turned and said, "We have to get to the Translation Chamber. Move." As the others began to go, he said to Jess, "I thou
ght we were dead."

  "So did I," Jess admitted. "I just thought I'd rather go out fighting."

  Santi slapped him on the same shoulder the lion had bruised. "I've decided I like you, boy."

  Jess somehow found himself grinning. "Everybody likes me. I'm charming."

  "Shut up and move."

  Morgan embraced him with wild strength when he reached her, but it was only a moment's pause before they began running down the corridor after Wolfe and Khalila. "Where's Glain?" he asked, and looked back. Thomas was helping Glain limp along; he'd ripped a strip from the black Scholar's robe to bind the hole in her leg, but she was still leaving a bloody trail of footprints behind.

  "We need to get her help," Morgan said. "She's losing too much blood."

  "Glain's too damned tough to die," he said, but Morgan didn't smile. She looked grim and scared, and he thought she ought to be. Their chances of surviving this day were looking smaller and smaller. They'd lost Dario; Glain was badly hurt. It had been a matter of seconds between his neck and a lion's jaws.

  The odds were good that someone was going to die before they got out.

  The Translation Chamber lay at the end of the hallway, a simple open alcove and a round room like the others Jess had seen; he realized only now that it had much in common with the round room below them, in the prison, where torture equipment had been set up. The difference was simply in usage. This room, too, was lined with tiled mosaics of gods and monsters, kings and warriors. In the center of it lay a marble couch in the old Roman style, and a helmet that reminded him of the ancient legions. It was connected by a thick, flexible metal cable that descended from a hole in the ceiling. Like the Translation Chamber at Darnah, it was otherwise empty--no, even more barren. Not even a bucket and sink for those who might get sick.

  And, more meaningfully, no guards. No Obscurist.

  "Can you do this?" he asked Morgan, and pointed to the couch, the helmet. "Turn it back on?"

  "Yes," she said. "Where are we going?"

  "London," Jess said, and looked at Santi and Wolfe for confirmation. Wolfe shook his head sharply.

  "Word is that the Welsh are already there," Santi said. "They're making quick work of English defenses. We could be trapped in the fighting, and how do you know your family hasn't already pulled out?"

  Jess turned to Morgan. "Can you send a message to my father on the Codex, and make sure no one else sees it? I can give it to you in code."

  "I think so. What do you want to say?"

  "Tell him I'll meet him at the warehouse. He'll understand. If he's not still in town, he'll warn us off."

  "I'll need a Codex," Morgan said. Khalila ran back down the hall and retrieved one from a fallen soldier. Jess wrote out the words in code on a scrap of Glaudino's note pages, and Morgan quickly copied it into the message page. Her words, Jess realized, didn't even show on the page at all, as if the ink erased itself as soon as she put it to paper.

  They waited tensely for a moment, and then the reply was written out in Callum Brightwell's spiky, urgent hand: Go careful.

  "He's still there," Jess said. "In London."

  "We still have a problem. The Serapeum is guarded," Wolfe said.

  "Not as much of a problem as you would think," Santi replied. "The High Garda will be out defending the perimeter; London Garda will be engaged with the Welsh. There are three of us in uniform--that's enough to cause confusion until we can win our way free. I know where the Translation Chamber is. We can make it outside, if your father can send us to safety after." Santi studied Jess with cold intensity. "Will he? No half-truths this time."

  "He will," Jess said, and then swallowed hard. "For a price. He'll need something in trade."

  "Something," Santi repeated. "Such as?"

  "I don't know," Jess said. "I'll think of something." But he already knew. His father would highly value the information about how to switch off the automata, but if it wasn't enough, Jess could offer the precious volume he'd translated for Thomas about the creatures. That was enough to buy all their lives ten times over. "We don't have much choice, do we?"

  Santi didn't look happy about it, but he nodded. They were well committed now, and any delays might mean capture, imprisonment, death.

  Jess stretched out on the marble couch. "I'll go first," he said. "I'll distract them with a story about fleeing a sneak attack on the High Garda in Rome. Send Glain after me."

  "I'm not sure that's wise," Khalila said. "She's injured."

  "That's why she has to go next," he said. "If I'm alone telling the story and she arrives . . ."

  "It's confirmation." Santi nodded. "All right. Morgan, if you can do this, you'd better do it now."

  There wasn't much choice. Morgan fitted the helmet over Jess's head. He muttered the standard good-luck phrase under his breath and waited for the mouth of the wolf to close over him . . . But those jaws never shut. He felt the pressure of Morgan's hands on the helmet, but there was no surge of energy. No power ripping him apart.

  He tilted his head to look back at her. "What's happening?"

  Her eyes were round and shocked, and she said, "I don't know! It's as if--as if I'm blocked from that path. It won't let me send you to London!"

  "Is it malfunctioning?" Wolfe demanded. "Because we can't stay here, Morgan."

  "I know! It's not . . . The power's there, but it's only letting me go . . ." Morgan closed her eyes a moment, and Jess felt something this time--a slight tingle, like a surge of static electricity. She caught her breath and whispered, "No. Oh God, no!"

  "What is it? What's wrong?" Jess sat up and stripped the helmet off. Morgan's eyes were filled with tears, her hands trembling as she raised them to cover her mouth. When she met his eyes, the tears spilled over. "Morgan!"

  She gulped back what seemed like sheer panic, and looked from him to Wolfe as she dragged her hands back down and balled them into fists.

  "I'm so sorry. They must have-- They must have known we'd try this. I can take you only one place from here," she said. "Just one."

  "Where?"

  "Alexandria," she whispered. "Into the Iron Tower."

  Wolfe stared for a moment, black eyes gone blank, and then shifted to send Santi a look. "This is my mother's doing."

  Jess dumped the helmet on the floor with a crash. "We can't go back to Alexandria. We have to fight."

  "Then we'll die," Santi said flatly. "And Glain won't survive that injury unless she gets help quickly. We can give up, or we can take a chance. The Obscurist isn't pledged to be loyal to the Archivist. She's loyal to the Library. There's a difference."

  "Hairsplitting," Wolfe said, but then shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Nic is right. We must chance it. It's that, die fighting, or--" He didn't need to state the alternative. They'd all seen it below in the cells. The torture chamber.

  "Not the Tower," Morgan whispered, and it was just for Jess. "I can't go back there. Jess--"

  He grabbed her hand and held fast. "Yes, you can," he said. "I'll be with you. I promise, I'm not leaving you."

  "Jess!" The wordless plea in her face hurt him, because he knew he had no way to answer it. He shook his head and saw the light go out in her eyes. He'd just betrayed her. Again.

  "We're agreed?" Santi asked, and one by one they nodded. Even Morgan, though the pallor on her face spoke louder than words. "Go."

  Jess settled the helmet over his head and felt Morgan's trembling, powerful hands come down on it. And this time, in bocca al lupo, the lightning came, and struck him apart into pieces and sent him shrieking into the dark.

  EPHEMERA

  An excerpt from the personal journal of Obscurist Magnus Keria Morning (interdicted to Black Archives)

  I have always tried to believe. Always.

  When I learned that, as late as three hundred years ago, Obscurists were allowed the same freedom as other Scholars, that the Iron Tower was only a place of work and study, and not our gilded prison, I accepted that these changes were made purely for our own prot
ection.

  Then I read in the Black Archives that two hundred years ago, the Library ruthlessly crushed a revolt by the families of those kept here with us--our children, our lovers, our husbands and wives. Those we loved were killed or exiled. The Archivist set new rules. Crueler rules. We could no longer keep our families or even our children, unless the children were gifted as Obscurists.

  My great-great-grandmother remembered a time when her husband lived here, and her children. She lost the ungifted in the revolt. It was not so very long ago, this change. This terrible, cruel desperation of our Archivists, striving to cling to power that is slipping away from them.

  Maybe if I had not read so much, did not know so much, I wouldn't see how we live now as a horror. But I think it is just that. The Library, in its terror of losing a grip on us, has crushed us instead. Maybe the dwindling number of children born with quintessence is a sign that the Library's stranglehold is destroying us, and that the Library's days are numbered.

  For myself, I should have never let them take my son away from me, or allowed them to take all those sons and daughters we still mourn. I hate every moment of my life as the jailor of this prison. I hate even more the necessity to follow these rules or be replaced by someone much, much crueler.

  I am resigned to my fate. No matter what it costs, I will try to make it right in the end.

  Keria Morning

  Obscurist Magnus

  In what I pray will be the last days of the Iron Tower.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Arriving in the Iron Tower was not what Jess expected, though he hadn't known what to expect, really. Guards seizing him? A sphinx pinning him down with a crushing paw? He did not expect to find himself coming awake in a garden of fresh, flowering plants: English roses, tulips from Holland, a blooming cherry tree from Japan gently shading the low, padded couch on which he lay. The rich, gentle scent of flowers and herbs filled the air, and he breathed it in over and over. It settled his stomach and filled him with a kind of calm he hadn't ever known before.

  Jess rolled off the couch and to his feet, and felt only a little unsteady--mostly from the beating he'd taken back in Rome--and saw an Obscurist sitting on a nearby folding chair. He was an older man, with handsome, sharp features that spoke of Eastern Europe, possibly Russia, and he nodded calmly at Jess. "Put the weapon down, please," he said. "You may, of course, keep it if it makes you comfortable. Just don't point it at me."