Sword and Pen

by Rachel Caine

  Murasaki’s lips moved. They’d gone a pale, unnatural color, but her eyes were fierce and dark, and her hand gripped Khalila’s wrist and held it tightly.

  “You must get to Wolfe,” she said. “I trust no one else now. He must serve.”

  “He won’t!”

  “He must,” Murasaki repeated, and let her head fall back to the bloody floor. She closed her eyes and whispered something in Japanese. Khalila didn’t catch the meaning.

  “Archivist? I didn’t hear!”

  Murasaki, with a huge force of will, opened her eyes and said, “Codex.”

  She was dying, and she asked for a Codex. Khalila, confused, handed hers over and opened it to a blank page. Put the stylus in the Archivist’s shaking fingers.

  And the Archivist wrote. Just three lines, and then the stylus fell from her fingers and she put her head back down and let out her last breath in a long, quiet sigh.

  Khalila bit her lip to hold back tears and retrieved the stylus, then looked at the words Murasaki had written. Her eyes blurred. The graceful kanji written there looked like music.

  It was her jisei, her death poem. An achievement the great Japanese poets aspired to make in their last moments.

  Desert rain runs clean

  Green chains shatter in lightning

  I run warm at last

  She felt Dario beside her and said, “She’s gone.” Her voice sounded soft and lonely. His arms closed around her. “Dario, she’s gone.”

  “I know, love.” He took a deep breath. “More High Garda are on the way. Honest ones, I hope. God knows how much geneih it took to buy these men.”

  She wiped her tears as he helped her to her feet. “This should never have happened. Never!” She felt ice-cold now, and full of fury. “We shouldn’t have killed them both. Now they can’t answer for what they’ve done.”

  “Revenge can wait,” Dario said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Unwounded. You?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. Her Codex buzzed, and she reached for it, then hesitated. Her hands were still bloody, and she wiped them on her dress before opening the book.

  Dario watched her read the message. “What is it?”

  “Santi’s coming in person,” she said. “He’s angry.”

  “He should be. These are his people. It’s an outrage.”

  “Dario. Did you hear what she said?”

  “When?”

  “Before she wrote the poem. Did you hear?”

  “No.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “She wanted us to find Wolfe. She wanted Wolfe to be the next Archivist.”

  And that meant drawing a perfect target on the back of the man she had grown to love as much as her own father.

  EPHEMERA

  Text of a letter from the Russian ambassador, destroyed before delivery to the Archivist in Exile

  As you asked, we sacrificed our two most precious assets—High Garda soldiers assigned within the Serapeum, in striking distance of the False Archivist. Though it cost their lives, they were successful. I am pleased to report that she is dead. Confusion will now set in. And with it, we now have our chance. Tonight we will attack the northeastern gates, and your inventions you sold us will no doubt strike real fear into the High Garda. I marvel that you’ve never used them for the defense of the Great Library. Unless you know something I don’t.

  Tonight is your chance. Seize it! It will not come again.

  If you survive, we will of course allow you to take the throne of Alexandria once more.

  But the tsar of Russia will be the true ruler of this place. That is the bargain. We will hold you to it by whatever means necessary.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WOLFE

  The Necropolis was more of a cemetery now than ever, as the bodies were lined up and casualties counted.

  Anit’s criminals were unpleasantly good at killing. The High Garda Elites had given a good accounting of themselves, and the fighting within the miniature Serapeum had gone on for hours, but they had never expected to be trapped inside it. They’d thought to fight in the dark and strike before Wolfe and his team had any warning.

  Jess’s trick with the mirrors had robbed them of their stealth, and his accuracy with a rifle had robbed them of their most valuable snipers. From then on, it had been straight combat, and good as they were—and High Garda Elites were very good—they were rarely challenged in any meaningful way. They’d always had the architecture of the Serapeum to defend them, and the automata, and their own legend. The only automaton here was the Minotaur, and Jess had blinded it. It roamed the tombs like a ghost still, lost and dangerous.

  Wolfe made himself a note to ask Morgan to see to stopping the thing. But that would be a low priority, he suspected, in the chaos of the day.

  Anit’s losses were also considerable; once the tally of the dead and wounded was complete, she’d lost ten and sent five to be treated by the physician, Burnham, who’d come with them on this grim adventure. The High Garda Elite’s fatalities numbered forty-six, and the remaining four had finally surrendered. Wolfe would have to find some deep hole to throw them in—but not one they’d ever guarded before and might know how to cheat. That would be a challenge. Maybe expulsion from the city would be the best possible answer . . . No, that would just give their enemies outside the walls useful allies and information. It was a terrible thought, but he knew it would have been a simpler problem if they’d just killed them all.

  “And still no sign of the Archivist,” he said to Glain as he closed his Codex. She was bloody, but only a little of it was her own; she’d fought like a woman possessed. She looked pale and strained now as the adrenaline departed.

  “No, sir,” she said. “It seems likely he was never here at all. All this was set up to kill you when you came looking. They meant it to be a deathtrap.”

  “And if I’d come with just you and Jess—”

  “We’d all be dead,” she said. At his look, she smiled. “I’m good, Scholar. Nobody’s that good.”

  “Well, perhaps you’re—”

  “Sir!” Glain was moving suddenly, and he went immediately on his guard for whatever was coming . . . but she was running toward Jess Brightwell, who was in the act of slumping to the ground with his back against the gunfire-chipped door of a tomb.

  Wolfe followed. He didn’t see any wounds, but the boy was pallid, sweaty, breathing in strangled gasps. His lips had taken on an unsettling violet tinge. “He can’t breathe,” Glain said. “He’s been like this since—”

  “I know,” Wolfe said. “Didn’t he see a Medica?”

  “Yes. He said he was all right. They gave him a mask of some kind—” She dug in Jess’s pockets and found a small, formfitting device of flexible rubber that fitted over his nose and mouth. It seemed to work, after a tense few moments; his breathing eased, and his color improved from grave gray to sallow. Color back in his lips and fingernails, at least a little.

  “He’s not well,” Wolfe said quietly. He’d been afraid of this. Afraid that his obsession, his lack of sensible caution, had finally cost a life. Worse still, the life of someone he cared for. Brightwell was in his charge, and he’d been reckless with the boy. “He should be in a Medica treatment hospital, not here.”

  “If he hadn’t been here, this might not have turned out as well as it did,” Glain observed. “He’s tough. He’ll be all right.” Her words were brusque, but the way she smoothed his hair back from his face was far more telling. Glain had a soft streak in her. In that she reminded him of himself. Rather strongly.

  “He’s waking up,” Wolfe said. The boy’s eyelids were fluttering, and they finally raised on a blank stare that seemed utterly unaware for a few long seconds before he blinked and focused on Glain’s face.

  “Welcome back,” she said, brisk as ever. “Good job you didn’t do thi
s in the middle of the fight.”

  “Well, I try to time my collapses conveniently,” Jess said, which almost made Wolfe smile. Almost. The young man’s face looked sharp, as if the skull under the flesh showed through. Unnerving. His skin seemed far too translucent. “Scholar, you’re all right?” He tried to get up. Glain pushed him down and placed the mask back over his face. He tried to bat it away. She speared a commanding finger at him, and without a word exchanged, he surrendered and breathed as deeply as he could. It did not seem deep enough to Wolfe. I’ve killed him. The thought struck deep, and it hurt so badly he drew in a startled breath. A death in slow motion, but nevertheless, a death. He wondered what exactly the Medica had said. Surely not that he should be back on duty, doing what he was doing. And he knew Jess would never tell him.

  “I’m fine,” he told Jess. “Fine work, Brightwell. You blinded the Minotaur, I understand.”

  Jess managed a shrug, and a hint of a smile behind the mask. He pulled it away to say, “Best I could do. The damn thing’s almost invulnerable.”

  “Breathe,” Glain scolded, and shoved the mask back in place. She looked at Wolfe, and he saw the same bleak knowledge in her eyes.

  He nodded. “Don’t make me nail this to your face, Jess. I will if you don’t use it when you’re in need.”

  “It works less every time,” he said quietly. “The mask won’t help too much longer.”

  “Well, as long as it does, you use it. We’re going back,” Wolfe said. “I need to talk to Santi, and get a better sense of where the old man’s been sighted. And you, Jess: you’re going straight to the Medica facility, where you will stay. Understand?” He could only pray the medical branch had tricks up their sleeves they hadn’t yet tried.

  “Sir? There’s news,” Glain said. She pulled out her Codex and flipped pages, then showed him a High Garda message from the Lord Commander’s Scribe. The Greek fire production and storage facility was compromised last night, and High Garda security killed. The situation is now resolved and the production facility is once again safely in our control. No further action is required. “This had to be the Archivist’s handiwork. But I doubt he was actively on the scene. He’s not one to risk himself that way.”

  “True,” Wolfe said. “That’s why I expected to find him crouching among the dead like the coward he is. But he’s seen me coming, and gone somewhere else. He failed to capture the Greek fire storage. Where else would he try to strike?”

  “Serapeum?”

  “No, too difficult, though he’d try to disrupt every location vital to the Great Library, if he could. Suicide attacks at the Iron Tower. Lighthouse. Serapeum. Santi would have thought of it already, even if he’s unable to prevent every one of them.”

  “Can the old Archivist open any of the gates? The northeast, perhaps?”

  It was a serious suggestion, and Wolfe considered it. “Where the Russians are camped? Certainly he could try to let them inside, but again, Santi would have thought of it. He’ll have a concentration of forces there, and at the second choice of gate as well. No, the Archivist isn’t so much of a strategist; he leaves that to his experts. He’d be looking for something no one else considers. Something that will give him a real advantage.”

  “Such as . . . ?”

  It was on the tip of his brain but refused to come to him. Something glimpsed from the corner of the eye that vanished in full view. He almost knew. Almost. But there was a missing piece, something that would tell him definitively where the old man would shift. Until he saw that, he wouldn’t be able to find the answer.

  And then it didn’t matter, because the Codex in his hands shivered and a new message arrived. He handed it back to Glain; manners dictated that he not read her correspondence, but he couldn’t help gleaning the meaning even from the unintended glance. It was confirmed when Glain said, “Santi’s summoning us to the Serapeum. I don’t know why. Maybe he’s got new information.”

  “Or maybe it’s something worse,” Wolfe said. “All right. We’ll need to head back through the tunnels—”

  “He’s sending a transport,” Glain said. “To the front of the Necropolis. We’re to meet him there. I don’t think the criminals are invited.”

  “Hey,” came Jess’s muffled protest. “I’m still going.”

  “I didn’t mean you, idiot. I meant—” She gestured at Anit and her clustered forces, who were preparing their injured and dead to be taken home. “You know what I meant.”

  Anit must have noticed Wolfe’s glance toward her, because she walked to them, touched Jess’s sweaty head, and said, “All right, my brother?”

  He removed the mask. “Yes, I’m fine. Sister.” There was something there, Wolfe thought. He’d always thought the smugglers only referred to one another as cousins in the business of crime. This seemed . . . more. “I’m sorry you lost so many.”

  “They knew the risks,” she said. “And I’ll pay the Library price.”

  “Library price?” Glain asked.

  Jess smiled. Not a very comforting expression, given his gaunt pallor. “The tradition is that for every one of our cousins that falls fighting High Garda, we pay a large sum to their families, and sponsorship for their children.”

  “Same as the High Garda does for its soldiers,” Glain said. “Clever, if reprehensible.”

  “Well, the High Garda started the fight.”

  “You are High Garda, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I haven’t,” Jess said. “But we both know those days are coming to an end, Glain.”

  There was a certain chilly certainty to that, and Wolfe felt it down his spine. He made his tone especially bitter when he said, “Enough chat, children. Anit, you may call on me for favors. Two or three of them, not to include any books from the Great Archives. Understood?”

  “Yes, Scholar. I accept. If you need more help, well. More favors. You understand.”

  “I do.” He offered her his hand, and she took it. “Thank you.”

  It was only in the awkward way she nodded that he saw her youth, just a flash and then gone. She walked back to her own, giving Jess one last look. He nodded in farewell, then—with Glain’s help—got to his feet.

  “Can you walk to the entrance?” Wolfe asked him. “No egotistical nonsense. It’s a direct question.”

  “Yes,” Jess said. He looked down for a second. “Not much further. I need rest.”

  “Obviously. And you’re going to get it if I have to have the Medica put you in restraints.”

  The fact that the boy didn’t argue worried him. Deeply.

  He’d just turned away when he felt the shift of air above them, heard the impact. Wolfe whirled back and saw the sphinx throwing Glain hard to the ground, its weight grinding her down. Its claws flexed and ripped bloody furrows through her uniform cloth, armor, and skin below.

  He shouted and reached for his weapon, but then he froze as the sphinx turned its head to regard him. It hissed in warning, and the claws sunk deeper. Glain twisted and cried out, and he stopped and raised his hands. “Let her go.” He didn’t know why he said it; surely the sphinx wasn’t going to respond to him. But he could draw its focus, at least, while Jess moved in on it to turn it off. “Please. Let her go.”

  He had the weird sense that this sphinx listened, that the menace he felt coming off the thing wasn’t simply mechanical programming but something almost human. An intelligence looking through its eyes.

  Jess didn’t need instructions. He approached carefully, and Wolfe moved a little, trying to hold the thing’s attention.

  It didn’t work. It moved its head to stare at Jess and freeze him in place, and clawed deeper into Glain. Gods. Wolfe swallowed a bubble of horror and tried to keep everything calm. All around them, guns bristled, and all were focused on the sphinx, but even if they all fired at once, the sphinx could easily rip the young woman’s spine out before
it was disabled. They had to find a way to turn it off without risking Glain’s life any further.

  Wolfe moved to his left, fast, and the sphinx’s head snapped around to follow him. It was an opening for Jess, if he was well enough to take it . . .

  But it wasn’t necessary.

  Inexplicably, the sphinx suddenly smiled. It was an awful expression, completely inhuman and horrifying, and then it launched itself straight up into the air, gliding away on golden wings that extended with a snap. Moving too fast for shots to land properly, and dodging away from the mirrors into the shadows far overhead. It would be impossible to hunt the thing.

  They needed to get out. Now.

  Wolfe rushed to Glain, along with Anit’s physician, Burnham, and Jess, who was already kneeling at her side.

  “I’m fine,” Glain said, and batted away attempts to look at her back. “It’s not bad. I’ll get it seen to later. We can’t afford to stay here.” Brave, but he saw the pallor on her face. It was almost certainly worse than scratches. “We need to go! Now!”

  It was going to come after them again. That much was absolutely certain.

  * * *

  —

  They were halfway through the Necropolis when Jess said, “It’s coming.”

  Glain—who was being helped along by Jess, or perhaps it was the other way around—looked sharply around the silent tombs. Anit’s people had already disappeared through their now invisible passage; they’d taken the Elite prisoners with them. Except for the distant stumbles and roars of the Minotaur, they seemed to be the only ones still alive in the whole vast cave.

  “Where?” Wolfe asked without looking up.

  “Up and left,” Jess said. Now that he focused, Wolfe could hear the metallic whisper of wings overhead. The sphinx had been silent for a while, but now it was flying high above them in the shadows.

  “Get your weapons ready. Jess, you’re in no shape to attempt any tricks; use your gun and stay out of reach. I know where the switch is located. If I can, I’ll get to it. But we’ll need it to land first.”