by Rachel Caine
Instead, I am ending it.
I am withdrawing our troops from this fight. Let the Great Library stand or fall as it may. We’re far from home, and we have lost far too many of our sons and daughters.
The High Garda, it was said, was weak. The city was complacent and soft.
Neither of these things are true, and we cannot win this war without destroying ourselves in the process.
I, for one, hope that the Great Library survives. It has fought hard enough for that privilege.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
JESS
Khalila was in danger. There was no discussion on whether or not to go, only how best to get there before it was too late. Dario was just . . . gone, moving so quickly not even Glain could get in his way. Wolfe wrote quickly in his Codex, but even as his stylus was moving, he said, “We can’t rely on security to stop the old man; he may still have allies inside the Serapeum, and he no doubt knows the place better than anyone.”
The odds of the Archivist having a secret way into the Serapeum were good, and Jess realized with a chill that no matter how careful Santi had been, he couldn’t know all the modifications and specializations the old man would have made during his reign. “His office is the most likely entry point,” Jess said. “He’ll have some way in and out that he kept secret. He could go in that way.”
“But Khalila isn’t using his office,” Glain said.
“Wasn’t,” Wolfe corrected her. “Now that she’s been elevated, she might. She was using a small desk in a storage area, and last I saw she was in a conference room with the Curia. But we don’t know what’s happened since.”
“Sir,” Jess said. “Send the warning to Dario. He’ll get to her and defend her to the death. You know he will.”
Wolfe glanced at him, then nodded and kept writing. “Yes. You’re right. But we still should hurry. This is his endgame, I think. And we don’t know what he’s got planned.”
“The old Archivist doesn’t have his Elites anymore,” Glain said. “We’ve killed most of them. So what could he possibly have left?”
“His pet Obscurist.” Morgan had been silently watching, but now she stepped forward. “Vanya Nikolin. He’s very good at staying out of sight. I’m not certain how powerful he is, but if he can assist the Archivist in any way, it’s by making him undetectable to most.”
“Can you find this Obscurist?” Wolfe asked. “If you can, then it’s very possible that we can find the Archivist along with him. If I know the old man, he’ll keep his Obscurist close and try to use one of the Serapeum’s Translation Chambers to escape once he’s done.”
“After he kills Khalila, and does God only knows what kind of damage,” Jess said. “We can’t wait for a transport.” And I’ll slow you down, he thought, and felt a surge of frustration and despair. It stung, but he had to be practical. He wasn’t well enough to run, or even walk. And they all knew that.
Morgan nodded. “Hands,” she said. They all looked at each other uncertainly. She rolled her eyes. “Stand in a circle and hold hands. I’ll get you inside the Serapeum.”
“Morgan,” Wolfe said. “Are you sure—” He glanced significantly at Jess. What he really meant was, Can he survive the trip?
And Jess wasn’t at all sure he could, but damned if he was going to say it. Not with Khalila’s life and the entire Great Library in the balance.
“Is there a choice?” Morgan asked quietly.
Wolfe didn’t like the answer; Jess could see that. But he held out his hands, and Jess clasped his left, Morgan his right. Glain stepped up and completed the circle.
Glain looked to her Blue Dog second, who was watching this with real worry. “Go straight to Lord Commander Santi,” she said. “Tell him we’re tracking the old man to the Serapeum, and Khalila is in danger. What are you waiting for? Go!”
“Sir.” He saluted.
Then the room dissolved around them in a flash of light, and Jess was falling, flying, flailing, in an ice-cold hell of darkness until suddenly it was done and he was collapsing to the floor. Translation. He hated Translation. And this time, he felt the damage it did to him, pulling at him in all kinds of horrible ways. It felt as if he was dying, as if he’d never draw in another lifesaving breath again . . . and he heard himself gasping over and over like a landed fish. Felt hands turning him over. Heard a confusion of voices smearing the air.
Then he was able to breathe a little, and the fog parted. He blinked and focused. Morgan was kneeling over him. And Wolfe. Glain stood apart, staring down.
“You didn’t even let us say it,” Jess managed to whisper.
“In bocca al lupo,” Morgan said. Her voice was gentle, her eyes full of grief. “The wolf hasn’t eaten you yet, Jess. I’ve helped you a little, but . . .”
“But you can’t save me,” he said. “I know. It’s all right.”
The walls above him looked familiar. So did the looming bulk of a desk. Gods in niches.
They were in the Archivist’s old office, and Jess felt a sudden shock of horror. The smell. The acrid, awful smell of the gas was everywhere. “Poison!” he gasped. “Get out!”
“It’s no longer effective,” Morgan said, and wrinkled her nose. “It’s foul-smelling, but that’s the worst of it. The part that made it so dangerous can only survive for an hour before it breaks down. I read the account in the Black Archives. We’ll be all right.”
Wolfe turned to Morgan. “Can you tell if the old man has been here?”
Morgan nodded. Her eyes were closed, but when she opened them Jess saw that shimmer again. Unearthly and wrong. “He has,” she said. “But he’s gone. I don’t know where he is now. We should get to Khalila, quickly.”
Jess tried to get up, but he couldn’t. The smell of the gas made him feel sick and weak all over again. He coughed and concealed the blood by hacking it onto his sleeve. Dark cloth concealed everything.
Wolfe checked the time. “She may be in the prayer room. There’s one set aside in the Serapeum near the conference room where I last saw her. Can you locate her? Or Dario?”
“Yes,” Morgan said. “But”—she looked at Jess—“he can’t come with us.”
“I know,” Jess said. “I’ll follow.” That was a lie. He had nothing left.
Morgan put a gentle hand on his brow, and he was shocked at how cold it was. Or how feverish he felt. He didn’t know which of them was worse at the moment. “Stay here,” she said. “Please.”
He couldn’t do anything else. His lungs were a ruin of pain, every breath agonizing. Blood bubbled at the back of his throat. I’m coming apart.
He didn’t want to die in the Archivist’s office. After all this, not here.
Wolfe said, “I’ll stay—”
“No,” Jess gasped. He managed to sit up and put his back against the desk. Smiled. “No, Scholar. Go. I’m all right. Just go!”
Wolfe’s face told him everything he needed to know about how painful the decision was, and how inevitable.
His friends left him behind. He was glad. This wasn’t something he wanted any of them to see.
He coughed out a mouthful of blood onto the carpeting and realized that it was already stained. Neksa’s blood? She’d died here. Then he frowned, because he clearly remembered that the Archivist had replaced that carpet. He touched the stain, and his fingers came away bright red.
Fresh blood. And not his own. What could that mean? Had someone caught the Archivist here and been injured or killed for their trouble?
Jess pulled himself up and followed the drops of blood across the carpet to the silent automata gods. There was a bright pool of crimson at the feet of Anubis, as if someone gravely wounded had been here and . . . touched what? He looked at everything twice and finally saw a smear of blood on the flail in the god’s hand. He touched it. Nothing happened. He wrapped his hand around it and tried to pull it. That wasn’
t right, but he felt it give slightly.
He turned his wrist and twisted.
The god stepped down and away from the opening, and the panel behind him slid open. Jess watched the automaton closely, ready to dodge should Anubis use that flail . . . but it seemed passive. He stepped up onto the pedestal and through the open doorway.
Anubis climbed back up to its former position. The door slid closed again.
Jess turned to see . . . a library. A room full of books, rich with the smell of aging paper, leather bindings. A hint of dust. Just the kind of room he would pick to die in, he thought, and felt a flicker of relief. He could feel the end coming. And this was a good place for it, at last.
The library was full of originals. Illegal, hoarded originals, just like home. The irony of it tasted bitter as the tainted blood at the back of his throat.
There was an old man in a chair, and he was bleeding all over the brown leather.
“Well,” the old Archivist said. “I see that neither of us has outrun our destinies, Brightwell.” He laughed a little, and gasped. His face turned the color of the palest of papers, so pale Jess could almost see the sharp lines of the skull beneath. “Irony of ironies. I came to die in the company of my oldest friends, and here you are. I can’t seem to get rid of you.”
“What happened?” Jess asked.
“Do you really care?” The Archivist smiled a little, but it failed after an instant. “Going to call someone? Medica? High Garda? An executioner? I fear you’re too late.”
“Who did it?”
“In the end? Zara managed one last shot as I was leaving,” he said. “I stretched her loyalty too far. ‘’Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.’”
“Don’t you dare quote Shakespeare.”
“I like Shakespeare, boy. I like everything. I read everything. Well, have read. All new things are now behind me.” The Archivist reached out for a book and opened it—not one of the rare originals on the shelves, but a simple Blank. His fingers were bloody and shaking. “Can’t damage the books by staining them. I thought I’d read something familiar now, if I could. Would you load one for me?”
In this moment he was just an old man afraid to die. All that he’d been, all the cruelty and power and fanatical zeal, had been dropped somewhere on the other side of this door. He wanted comfort.
And he did not deserve it. Jess thought of Brendan, dying in his arms. Thought of Neksa murdered on this vile old dictator’s command, and the people killed in the arena he hadn’t even known. Thousands of deaths to hang around this man’s neck. Tens of thousands.
Including his own, because he knew the poison would get him yet. One last, fatal gift from the grave.
He opened his own Codex. “What do you want?”
“I think Aristotle’s Poetics. One of my favorites.”
Jess tapped the title and held the Codex to the Blank. Aristotle’s flowing Greek filled the pages, and the Archivist smiled a little. “I will be the last to read this book,” he said. “Isn’t that a great and terrible thing?”
“You mean, it’s the last thing you’ll read.”
“No,” the Archivist said, and met his eyes. Jess had been wrong. Pale, weak, dying, the old man was still himself. Still full of spiteful power, and something worse. “I will be the last to read Poetics. The last to read any of the books stored in the Great Archives. So it’s fitting that I will savor it before it’s gone.”
Jess’s mouth went dry. He remembered being a child, locked in a carriage with a madman who ripped pages from the world’s rarest book only to eat them. There was some of that evil pleasure in the Archivist’s eyes now. He enjoyed taking something out of the world. He intended to be buried with his possessions, like an ancient Pharaoh. Only the Great Archives never belonged to him.
“What have you done?” he blurted.
“Blame Archivist Nobel,” the Archivist said. “He never imagined a day when destroying the Great Library was a choice we could really make; he intended the system as a deterrent for any enemies willing to attack Alexandria. But that’s purely his lack of imagination. It only takes the will to act.”
Jess forgot his own weakness. He grabbed the old man by the front of his jacket and dragged him up and out of the chair, but the Archivist was deadweight, hardly able to stand. His head lolled drunkenly on his neck. He was bleeding so badly it fell like rain around him.
“This place is mine,” the Archivist said. He sounded faint and exhausted. “And I will take it back. I bind it in blood and ashes and flame. Tomorrow I will be gone, but so will the Great Library of Alexandria. It’s done, boy. It’s done.”
Jess let go and stepped back. He couldn’t comprehend what he was hearing.
“What have you done?” he asked again.
“I’ve killed it,” the man said. He smiled.
And then he collapsed.
Dead.
EPHEMERA
Excerpt from Brendan Brightwell’s personal journal, never transcribed into the Great Archives
I had a dream once that I was an only child, and I woke up from it crying. I was just a wee lad then, and when Jess asked me why I was crying I hit him until he went away.
Because that was the moment I realized that although I thought I hated my brother, hated the whole idea of there being two of us identical on this earth . . . I couldn’t do without him, either. I needed him.
And, yes, I loved him.
By the time we were old enough to form these thoughts properly, and adult enough to talk about them, we weren’t really talking at all. Jess had turned bookish and hated everything about his life, including me. I can’t really blame him for it. Da had made our lives a living hell the whole time, and I’d been the one Da favored.
I wish I’d made things right.
I hope I still can someday.
I don’t want to be alone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
KHALILA
Khalila was in midsentence when Dario burst into the conference room, a full dozen High Garda soldiers in his wake. She paused, shocked, and he sent her a quick, apologetic glance and turned to the soldiers. “Close the shutters and secure the doors,” he said. “No one comes in or out without my approval.”
“Hold!” Khalila said sharply. “Scholar Santiago doesn’t speak for me. What is this?”
“The old man is here,” Dario told her. She saw the very real worry in his eyes. “He means to kill you, querida, and I will not let that happen. These are Santi’s picked troops. They’re loyal.”
The Curia members—only three in the room just now—had come to their feet. Litterae Magnus Vargas had drawn a concealed High Garda weapon. And Khalila felt the cool reassurance of the dagger she kept strapped to her forearm. It was no defense against a bullet, but what was? She wore an armored jacket beneath her summer blue dress, and a thin layer of flexible mail under the hijab to protect her head. It was practical. It was not perfect.
“Thank you for your concern,” she said, “but we are in the middle of coordinating—”
“I don’t care,” Dario interrupted. “I need you safe.”
She drew herself up to her full height and met his gaze squarely. “Scholar,” she said, and kept her voice calm and quiet. “What I need from you is obedience. Take these soldiers and leave the room. You may secure it from outside if you like. I will order the shutters closed. But you must go. Now.” She turned to the lieutenant in charge of the High Garda. “And you need to understand who to obey. You obey me, the members of the Curia, and only after us, a full Scholar, no matter what his relationship to me might be. Do you understand this?”
He seemed shocked, but he nodded and composed himself quickly. “Yes, Archivist. My apologies. I believed there was a direct and immediate threat to your safety.”
“Not in this room,” she said. �
��And I trust you to prevent any from reaching it. Scholar Santiago? A word.”
She turned and walked toward the farthest corner of the room, and heard his footsteps follow her after a few seconds of silence. She didn’t turn until he reached her. “This will not happen again,” she told him. “Dario, I am not your querida. I am the Archivist and Pharaoh of the Great Library, and you will not do this again. Do you understand?” She leveled a stare on him, and knew he felt it. She saw him flinch from the deep cut she’d just delivered. She didn’t like it, but she knew it was necessary.
“I was just—”
“I know what you were doing,” she interrupted. “I love you, Dario. But I will not be ordered about, or silenced, or overruled. In private, we are equals. Here, we are not and we can never be. Do you understand?”
He held in whatever anger he felt, though she saw a muscle clench tight along his jaw. “I understand.” The words were quiet and very clear. “My apologies, Archivist. I am yours to command.” She waited for the but. He managed to avoid it. She gave him full credit for it; she wouldn’t have thought he could. “We questioned the captain of the Elites. He said that you were to be killed here, in the Serapeum.”
“Lord Commander Santi authorized additional guards,” she said. “Do you not think I am kept aware? Dario. My love. You must trust that I know what I’m doing, or this will not work between the two of us. I’m honored by your passion, but—”
“But I undermined your authority,” he said, and bowed his head. “I’m sorry. I only meant to guard you.”
“I’ve taken the highest office in the Great Library. That entails risk. And I can’t be seen to be afraid of it.”
This time, he didn’t speak at all. Only nodded. And that was when she knew he understood.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and gently kissed him. “For knowing when to stop.”
He smiled a little, but there was a bleak distance in his eyes she didn’t fully understand. “Oh, I don’t,” he said. “Not where your safety is concerned. But I’ll be more careful.” He bowed. Not even a trace of mockery. “With your permission, Archivist, I’ll withdraw from the room. I’ll be right outside when you need me.”
