Paper and Fire

by Rachel Caine

  "No," he said. "Let him think."

  It took a torturously long time for Callum's words to appear again. When they did, it wasn't about Jess's needs at all. Your brother is here, the words read. Word's been put about in Alexandria that you and your friends died in Rome. You understand my concern.

  "Concern?" Morgan frowned at the page and raised her voice, as if his father could hear her. "Concern? He thought you were dead, and he takes it so calmly?"

  "I told you," Jess said. "He's not sentimental."

  She gave him a disbelieving look. He pointed at the page where more words were written. Your brother's nickname. Now. Or we disappear and you won't reach us again.

  "He means it," Jess said. "Write Scraps."

  "What?"

  "Scraps. Leftovers. You know. Just write it."

  She looked mystified but obeyed. Another blank space, and then Callum wrote, He still hates that name. He says to tell you that. I'm glad you're all right, son.

  "That," Jess said, "is probably all the sentimentality you'll ever see from my family. Cherish it."

  Morgan refreshed her quill and frowned at the level of ink left. She wrote, Message back when you have everything arranged. We won't have much time.

  Done, his father wrote, and Jess could almost hear the clap of the book closing. His father would be on his feet now, tugging down his expensive silk waistcoat, pacing the thick Turkish carpet of his office. Brendan would be slouched in a chair nearby, listening to every word. He felt curiously reassured by that vision, and by knowing that though he wouldn't trust his family to save his life, he could trust them to see the profit in what he was bringing them. His life was just part of the deal.

  Morgan capped the ink. "I'll need more before we go," she said. "It's the one thing I can't make any other place." She wiped the quill clean on a scrap of cloth and tucked it in the holder on the side of the Codex.

  "You're taking the Codex? Won't they miss it?"

  "Hardly anyone here bothers to request new books. We get almost everything mirrored to our Serapeum downstairs as it is." She hesitated, stroking the cover of the Codex, and asked, "Are you sure we can trust him? Your father?"

  He wished he could say yes. More than anything, he wanted to believe he could. But what he said was, "You can trust he'll see the profit in rescuing us and the books. Once he realizes the opportunities of building the press, I doubt he'll have a second of hesitation in throwing the full weight of the black markets behind this."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "That sounds like a harsh kind of love."

  It was a perfect description for his childhood. He'd not known anything else until he'd come here to Alexandria, and now he could look back on it and see how dry and arid it was.

  But useful nevertheless. I might be just as bad, he thought. I can't see my brother and father as anything but tools to be used. I should be better than that. He'd not even spared a moment to think about his mother--not that he wasn't fond of her in the abstract, but she'd never been present for him. Would she have cried over his death? Probably. But he had the awful feeling that it would have just been for herself and not for him.

  "Don't," Morgan said. She turned toward him and put her hand on his chin to turn his face toward her. "Don't go into your head and leave me. I'm just as frightened as you are, you know."

  "You? The girl who defies the Iron Tower and wins? I doubt you understand what fear means to the rest of us." He removed her hand from his chin, but only to raise it to his lips. He kissed the soft skin while looking into her eyes and saw her shiver. Felt her skin rise in chill bumps under his touch. "Thank you."

  "For what?"

  He pointed to the Codex. "For reminding me there's more to life than what I grew up knowing."

  Wolfe, Khalila, and Thomas were still arguing. Morgan sighed and tilted her head in their direction. "I suppose--"

  "That we should help? Yes. We'll be out of time soon."

  Morgan proved to be a calming influence, and Jess interrupted arguments when it became clear both sides had points, and within another hour, they'd scraped together a good deal more than a hundred volumes. Too many to carry. Jess and Santi took charge of weighing the bags and removing what couldn't be taken, though every one they abandoned put a cut on Jess's heart. It's all right, he thought. Maybe we can come back later for more. She'll help us. She'd said she couldn't, but Jess was seeing quite a bit of Wolfe in his mother's character, including the steel-hard stubbornness.

  Keria Morning hadn't survived all these years as an enemy of the Archivist by giving up, giving in.

  The Codex that Morgan carried must have changed, because she quickly drew it out and opened it. Then she frowned.

  "Is it from my father?" Jess asked.

  "No," she said, and went to the Obscurist. She showed her the entry. "It's from Gregory, to you."

  The Obscurist read the message, closed the book, and nodded. "We're out of time," she told him. "The Archivist's guards have entered the Tower. Gregory let them in, and I'm being ordered to surrender you all immediately. You must Translate to London. Now."

  "My father's not sent back a reply yet," Jess said. "Until we know it's safe--"

  "It won't be safe here," she interrupted him. "They're coming. Now."

  Silence settled in with grim weight, and Santi said, "Then we go." It sounded like a death sentence. Jess swallowed hard.

  Thomas silently took Glain's pack and added it to his own. She didn't say she was grateful, but Jess could see she was. Her leg was still painful and no doubt would slow her down in a running battle, but she bore the pain stoically. He expected nothing less. Glain would always do her best, until her best wasn't good enough.

  Jess found himself missing Dario; the Spaniard's sharp humor would have been a nice addition just now. Khalila was steady and calm and as cheerful as she could be, but there was no doubt she understood this was a one-way step into total darkness. What they'd find on the other side . . . none of them truly knew. Jess certainly didn't.

  The Obscurist stopped at the iron door and said, "Morgan. I can do one last service for you, at least."

  Morgan flinched as Keria reached out and brushed her fingertips in a line across the gold collar circling her throat.

  It unlocked with a sudden, dry snap.

  Morgan gasped and reached up to pull it off. Once she had, she stared at it as if she had no conception of what it was, until suddenly she let it fall to the floor with a heavy thud. The skin beneath was pale and moist. She didn't seem to know what to say, but finally she whispered, "Thank you."

  Wolfe's mother nodded. She seemed very calm. Very . . . resigned. "They would be able to track you through it if you'd kept it on. Morgan, I'll leave it to you to remove any tracking scripts that they try to link to the Library bracelets the others wear. It might help to leave them on for now. People hesitate to kill librarians." She hesitated and closed her eyes. "I've failed you in many things, Christopher. I won't fail you in this. You must trust me now."

  It was a leap Jess thought might be impossible for Wolfe, but he stared at her for a long moment and then crossed to her. He took her hand in his. "I do," he said.

  "I don't deserve that, do I?" Her smile was broken and beautiful and very real. "A mother should always protect her child. And I haven't."

  He stood for a moment holding her hand, and then suddenly pulled her forward into an embrace. It was fierce and fast, and then he turned away, head down. The Obscurist blinked away tears, took a breath, and said, "It's time to go."

  She summoned the spiral stairs, and they descended quickly. The garden seemed deserted as they arrived, but Jess heard the sound of shouting echoing up from below. The Archivist's troops must have already arrived. They were searching.

  "There's no time left," the Obscurist said. "I'll have to take the risk."

  "What risk?" Wolfe pushed forward, Santi just a step behind.

  "I'll have to send you all at once. If I send you one at a time, half of you won't make it."
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  "You can't do that! Even you--" Morgan stopped, looking at the others. "It's too much for anyone. It will--"

  "Kill me?" The Obscurist looked around at the beautiful, peaceful garden and sighed. "So be it. I'll need you all to put your hands on the helmet--"

  Jess felt the warning hiss of instincts coming alive, and his head jerked up and around, looking for the threat.

  It was all around them.

  The Artifex Magnus himself stepped out of the shadow of a spreading plum tree, pale blossoms brushing his long white hair. Behind him, around him, all around the room, more soldiers rose from concealment. Aiming their weapons.

  Santi trembled on the edge of raising his own gun, then raised one hand, bent, and carefully placed the weapon on the floor by his feet. "Disarm," he said. His voice sounded flat and dead already. "There's no point."

  Glain raised her weapon and sighted on the Artifex. "There's every damn point."

  But she didn't fire, because the Artifex pushed someone unexpected out into the path of any of her bullets.

  Dario.

  He wasn't bound or restrained. He hadn't been wounded or beaten. He looked rested, well nourished. Well dressed.

  And he couldn't look any of them in the eyes.

  "Dario?" Khalila's whisper was full of stunned relief, and she took a step forward . . . and then he looked up and met her gaze. "Dario." All the life drained out of her voice. "What is this?"

  "Traitor." Glain's hands were white around her gun, but she'd lowered it now to stare at the face of their friend. "Y mochyn diawl."

  He opened his mouth, hesitated, and then said, "I didn't have a choice."

  Arrogant, clever Dario Santiago had sold them out. Of course he had. Maybe he'd been doing it all along; he hadn't had a chance to report their plans to rescue Thomas at the last moment because they had moved too quickly. But he'd tried to sell them out.

  It came to Jess in a cold wave that if they'd actually escaped to London, it would have probably been a trap. Dario would have seen to it. He'd survived in Rome alone because he'd never been in any real danger.

  He'd gone to report to his spymaster.

  Glain threw down her weapon with an angry snarl.

  Jess thought coldly and seriously about putting a bullet in Dario. It would have been murder, absolutely and clearly murder. He very nearly did it, anyway.

  Then he bent and put his gun on the floor, and as he straightened, the soldiers rushed in and grabbed each of them. No, not all of them. Not Morgan. Not the Obscurist Magnus. He supposed they'd been told to leave them alone.

  Thomas hadn't said anything at all. Neither had Wolfe. They had identical expressions, Jess realized, as if something had drained out of them. As if their souls had already left their bodies behind.

  It can't end this way. It can't. But it had, he realized, for so many others. The Black Archives were full of failures who believed they'd survive.

  He'd end up on the shelves, too. All of them would.

  "Don't!" Dario said sharply to a soldier who put his hands on Khalila. "Don't touch her."

  "I don't want your protection!" she shouted at him. "Traitor!"

  "Maybe not," he said. "But you've got it, anyway." He held out his hand. "Come with me. Come away from here. You don't need to see this."

  "You're not going anywhere," the Artifex said. "Bring them. All of them."

  "But--" Dario looked confused and angry. A flush deepened the color of his cheeks, and he rounded on the old man with clenched fists. "You can't--"

  "On orders of the Archivist himself, I can," he said. "You're all fools. None of you understand the consequences of what you've done." The Artifex, Jess realized, was angry, and it wasn't just because of their rebellion. It was something else.

  He walked straight to the statue of Horus, pressed the hidden switch, and watched the staircase descend. Then he led the way upstairs to the Black Archives.

  "Bring them," he said. "They should see the price of their meddling."

  Back in the hidden rooms, they were pushed against the back wall and held there by the armed High Garda soldiers, who must have been the Artifex's hand-picked personal guard. Santi didn't appeal to them for help, and Jess didn't, either. They stood silently against the rough wall of the Iron Tower and watched as the Artifex stepped out to crane his head up, up, to look at the seemingly infinite spiral of shelves.

  "So much," he murmured. "So much wasted." He turned to them, and his old, seamed face was grim with anger. "You've forced this. All of you, with your pushing and questioning and disbelief. You don't know how much we've saved you from: war, famine, pestilence, a thousand kinds of death. We've raised humanity from the mud, and you still chase after phantoms instead of appreciating the peace all around you."

  "Save us the speeches," Wolfe said. "Kill us, if you intend to do it."

  "I will," he said. "But first I have to do what I've been ordered. May all the gods damn you for it."

  He took a small leather case from a pocket of his robe and opened it.

  A glass globe filled with green fluid rolled into his outstretched palm.

  Jess pulled in a breath, but Wolfe was the first to understand, fully, the impossible. "No," he said. "You can't. You can't."

  "I don't want to," the Artifex said. He was crying. Tears streamed from his reddened eyes and lost themselves in the canyons of wrinkles beneath. "But you did this, Wolfe. You."

  He threw the Greek fire into the shelves of delicate, flammable books.

  Jess screamed and threw himself forward, but it was too late, too late. The glass broke, the thick greenish liquid splashed over vulnerable spines and fragile paper, over faded ink and lost dreams.

  And then, with the sound of a sickening, indrawn breath, it ignited.

  Jess lunged at the soldier in front of him and slammed his forehead into the man's nose with a muscular crunch and a corresponding blackness that radiated through his skull like a ringing bell. He didn't pause, just put his shoulder into the staggering man's stomach and heaved up to toss the soldier off his feet.

  The restraints tightened around his wrists like snakes constricting, and he felt a hideous whine inside his head. The first shelf of books was fully on fire with licks of greenish-white flame. The second above it smoked, and Jess could see paper blackening and curling at the edges.

  Santi had put down a soldier, too. Glain hadn't; she was hobbled by her bad leg and had fallen herself. Together, he and Santi rushed at the Artifex. Jess didn't have a clue what the good of it was, but he had to do something.

  They never made it, of course. Jess felt something hit him in the back and pitch him forward, off balance, and fell to the floor hard. Santi fell just a breath behind him, and before Jess could scramble back to his feet, someone was pinning him down.

  Jess raised his head and watched the shelves of the first level smoke, warp, spark, and burn. Book after book.

  Level after level.

  When the smoke became thick and choking and Jess could no longer see for the tears streaming out of his eyes, he felt himself being pulled backward by his legs, out into the sweeter air.

  The Black Archives were gone.

  And now all that remained was for the Artifex to finish them off.

  He was being rolled toward the steps; Santi had already been pushed down them, to roll in an awkward ball. Jess would be next. The others had already been sent down, and he saw Khalila's stark, blank face staring up. Morgan beside her. Thomas was crouched on the floor in the open space of the garden, beside the Translation equipment they wouldn't have a chance to use. It would take too long, even if Morgan could operate it. What remained would be a quick, ugly death for most of them, and prison inside this tower for Morgan and Wolfe's mother. Forever.

  Then he was tumbling down the steps, and tucked himself into as tight a ball as he could. He landed badly and cried out when his face hit the tiled floor. Fresh red blood dripped from cuts on his face like tears, brilliant even in the dim light. He coughed
and coughed, trying to get the taste of bitter ashes out of his lungs, and between the retching spasms he realized he was still weeping for all the books he'd just seen die.

  He felt fingertips brush the restraints holding him, just a quick touch, and the numbing pain of them loosed. Someone was kneeling over him. He heard the Obscurist Magnus say, in a strange and distant tone, "You've given me no choice, Artifex. You know that. And I am a very bad enemy."

  "Not for long." The Artifex was a blur on the edges of Jess's vision. He turned his head and blinked to clear his eyes. Wolfe's mother was kneeling beside him, and under the smudge of smoke and ashes, the look in her eyes was something so terrible, he didn't want to stare at it for long.

  "You've killed so much of the past today," she told him. "Generations and generations of brilliance. But you know what you'll never kill?"

  The soldiers of the Artifex were just as affected by the smoke as Jess; they were coughing, their eyes streaming and red.

  So they missed seeing Thomas flex his wrists and break the restraints holding him. They missed seeing Dario, who'd been flung to his hands and knees on the tile next to Khalila--still unbound, both of them--pick up the weapon that Glain had thrown down at the edge of the open space, near the bench.

  Missed seeing Morgan draw her fingers over Wolfe's restraints and then over Santi's. Hers were already loose.

  "You will never kill our future," Wolfe's mother said, and as if it was a signal, as if they'd planned this, Thomas came up with a roar and lunged forward, taking down three guards at once, and Dario aimed and fired one perfect shot at the Artifex Magnus.

  The Artifex fell. Dead or only wounded, Jess couldn't tell. He ripped his wrists free and grabbed for another fallen weapon, and in seconds he was firing, too, targeting one High Garda uniform after another. It was bloody chaos, and he couldn't see where his friends were, couldn't see anything except Wolfe's mother laying hands on both Wolfe and Santi and somehow, without the Translation equipment, unmaking them into a spiraling whirlwind of flesh and bone and blood. She reached Dario and Khalila, and they, too, vanished into a bloody mist. Gone.