Smoke and Iron

by Rachel Caine

  Neksa, without pausing or slowing her stride, held up her hand to show her bracelet, and he did the same. Horus tracked their progress with unnerving intensity but didn't move, and once they were past the tree trunks of his legs, he allowed himself a little breath of relief. He'd been so occupied with Horus that he'd failed to check the other gods in the rows, but he had little doubt that they, too, were automata, which meant anyone invading this place would come to a bad, red end.

  Not the sort of place you took by force of arms, the Serapeum.

  "Impressive," he said. Neksa ignored him. "In London we never see the like of these particular automata. Are they new?"

  "Stop talking," Neksa said. "Or you'll get to inspect them all too closely."

  She sounded sincere, and he went quiet, absorbing the next hallway, and the next. It was a labyrinth in here. He wondered whether the hallways themselves were, in some form, automata; perhaps they moved and reconfigured on a schedule, to foil people like him memorizing the layout of the place. They all seemed the same, and confusingly indirect to the purpose.

  For what it was worth, though, he kept a mental map until they'd arrived in an anteroom he recognized . . . one with four High Garda Elite on duty. They all looked strong and razor edged. One--he presumed the one in command--nodded to Neksa briskly and fixed a dark stare on him. "Against the wall," the commander barked. She was a small woman, with the fair hair and skin of the Nordic regions, and greenish eyes that looked as cold as sea ice. Scars on her neck, her hands, and a particularly large one on the side of her face. She looked like she ate fear for breakfast.

  He put his palms against the nearest wall and leaned. She searched him efficiently and thoroughly, finding nothing, and when she snapped her fingers to indicate she was finished, he turned and leaned back on the wall to give her an appraising look. She ignored him and returned to her post.

  Neksa was already seated behind her desk and was writing in the Codex there.

  "Well?" he asked. "Was I summoned to admire the decor?"

  He might as well have been a bug for all the attention they gave him, and the minutes stretched by until Neksa suddenly rose and threw open the double doors to the Archivist's office.

  A man strode out, followed by a small army of retainers. He wore too-ornate Obscurist robes, as if he still hadn't quite worked the stiffness out of them . . . and then the newcomer's face went florid with rage and he pointed. "Arrest him!"

  The Obscurist's retainers moved forward instantly, but the High Garda commander stepped into the path and shook her head mutely. That ended the matter.

  "What are you doing? That's Jess Brightwell! He's a wanted criminal!"

  "Understandable mistake. I'm the other Brightwell son. Brendan. My brother does indeed resemble me. Makes for an uncomfortable visit here, I'll tell you that."

  "Visit?" The Obscurist barked it out in bitter amusement. "I don't care who you are; your whole family should be burned to the ground. You're enemies of the Library, all of you."

  "Allies of the Library, you mean," Brendan said, and bowed slightly. "Though I'll grant you, it's a strange turn of events for us, too. I've got no love for my feckless brother. If I lay hands on him, I promise, you can have him, sir."

  "It's my lord. You are speaking to the Obscurist Magnus."

  "Oh." He cocked the eyebrow with the scar in it. "Thought the Obscurist Magnus was a woman. My error, my lord."

  He couldn't resist mocking the man, even though he knew how dangerous it was.

  The Obscurist gave him a thin, angry smile. "She was," he said. "Dead and forgotten now." He took a few steps past, then made a show of turning around, as if he'd only just thought of something. "Please tell your beloved brother that his young lady, Morgan, is in good hands. I've matched her with our brightest Obscurist. I'm sure their children will be most gifted."

  It was obvious enough that the idiot thought that might goad him into some fit of temper, but he'd chosen the wrong Brightwell for that.

  Brendan shrugged. "Well, doubt I'll be talking to Jess anytime soon, seeing as how he's cut ties with me as well as you. But I'm sure he'd thank you for your consideration."

  Whatever the Obscurist had been looking for, the bland answer didn't please him. He stalked off without another word.

  Neksa said, without looking up from the paperwork she was shuffling on her desk, "Don't keep him waiting."

  Brendan nodded and noted the slight tremble in her hands, the color in her face. She still cares, he thought. He hardly deserved it, of course, and he wondered what she was so worried about. His father's power protected him . . . and if it didn't, there was absolutely nothing he could do to prevent coming to a bad end.

  He reached out and touched her on the cheek. For an instant, she froze, and her eyes moved to lock on his. "It's all right, love," he told her. "I'll be all right."

  Her mouth opened, but she said nothing.

  He walked into the Archivist's office.

  There was no one inside. Just the desk, the silent automata, and a chill in the air that might have just been his imagination.

  His breath went cold in his chest. His fingers went numb. And he realized that the cold wasn't his imagination at all.

  "Sit," a voice said, and for a disorienting moment, he thought it was the statue of the goddess Bast speaking to him . . . and then he realized that something very wrong was happening. The air smelled sickly sweet, too thick, too heavy in his lungs. He felt himself moving, not to a chair, but to collapse to a sitting position on the carpeted floor like a dropped puppet. This is wrong, he thought, and the word rang in his head like a silver bell: wrong, wrong, wrooooooong . . . It smeared into a silver mist and was gone, and he sat, waiting, for the goddess to speak again.

  "Tell me your name," the voice said.

  "Brendan Brightwell," he said.

  "Again."

  "Brendan Brightwell."

  "Again."

  "Brendan Lyell Sinclair Brightwell," he said. He felt free now, floating outside his heavy, inert body. "Son and heir of Callum Brightwell."

  "Did you come here with a valid offer from Callum Brightwell?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you intend to deceive us?"

  "No."

  "Do you intend to cheat us?"

  Brendan felt himself grinning. "I'd be foolish if I didn't try," he said. "Though if you make it profitable enough, I'll play straight. Father's orders."

  He heard another voice, low and in the background. An angry old man. Cheat me, will they? I'll see them all hanged. Hanged, like Liam, on a dirty gibbet in London when Brendan was just a boy. He remembered watching. It had been an object lesson in the price of failure. His brother Jess had tried to turn away, had cried. But Brendan had watched, dry-eyed, and he'd won his father's approval that day. It wasn't that he hadn't loved Liam, though the boy was much older than him and Jess; it was that he understood, as Jess never had, that death was the cost of play. Great rewards required real risks.

  Why was he thinking of Liam? Hadn't thought of him in ages. But now he remembered his elder brother ruffling his hair, sneaking him treats when no one was looking, especially when he'd been exiled to his room in punishment. Liam had died younger than Brendan was now.

  He felt a trickle of wetness on his cheeks but couldn't raise his hands to wipe it away.

  "What is your name?" the voice asked again.

  "Brendan Brightwell."

  "And the name of your brother?"

  "The live one, or the dead one?"

  Whispered conversation he couldn't follow. "The live one."

  "Jess," he said. "Jess Brightwell."

  "Do you love your brother?"

  "Of course."

  "Would you betray him?"

  Brendan fell silent. Remembered Liam on the gallows, waiting for the drop. In that last moment, Liam had looked straight at him.

  "Yes," he said. "If I had to." It broke something inside him with a sharp, cold snap. "Don't make me."

  "Whe
re is your brother?"

  "I don't know."

  "At your home?"

  "I don't know."

  The voice took on a dark amusement. "But you'll tell me where your home is, won't you?"

  "No," Brendan said. "Before I left England, I took the precaution of having that particular memory blocked by a Mesmer. I can't lead you to my father, or the press. Or my brother, if that's who you want most."

  "Why did you come here?"

  "To make a deal. Simple as that."

  "Do you intend to betray the Archivist or the Great Library?"

  "No," Brendan said. "Not unless my father decides there's a better deal elsewhere."

  Honest answers, every one. Silence ticked by like a leaking tap, drip, drip, drip of seconds, minutes, and he waited, frozen in place. His legs were going numb. He wasn't sure he could stand up even if the goddess allowed it.

  Then it all began again.

  And again.

  And again.

  His voice had gone hoarse by the time silence fell at last, and his skin felt raw from the cold. He was so tired it was all he could do to hold himself upright, and he was pitifully grateful when the voice of the goddess finally said, "We're finished here."

  A fresh blast of air hit him in the face, fluttering his hair and clothes, and he pulled in a breath of something that ached sharply in his lungs. He felt weak, and then exhausted beyond any reasonable measure, and pitched sideways onto the carpet as if his muscles had been cut. He gasped in the cool, clear air, and as the fog began to subside in his head he knew what had happened. Gas. He'd been drugged. But not only that. There had been a compulsion as well, something centering in the bracelet he wore. An Obscurist who'd trained as a Mesmer--and a powerful one--had been manipulating him. Trying to pry the lid off his brain and stir around in there.

  The sense of nausea that swept over him made him glad he'd collapsed; if he'd been upright, no doubt he'd have ruined the carpet. It subsided before it grew too desperate, and he slowly rolled over on his back as a door at the rear of the room opened to admit the Archivist and an impressive retinue of armed guards.

  "You bastard," Brendan gasped, and tried to get up. He failed but kept trying until he finally managed to climb to his feet and stagger to the nearest chair. He fell into it with sick gratitude and cradled his pounding head in both hands. "What was the point of that?"

  The Archivist seated himself behind his desk and fussed with the placement of his Codex, blank paper, pens . . . and then sat back and tented his fingers together as he stared at Brendan. "I had to be certain," he said. "You and your brother are so startlingly alike. I needed reassurance that I was not dealing with the wrong Brightwell. That would have been a fatal error."

  "Well, you aren't," Brendan snapped. "And if you ever do anything like this to me again, the deal's off and I'm gone, and my family will not take it well. Understand?"

  "Of course." The Archivist's tone was smooth as melting butter. "I wouldn't dream of subjecting you to it again. You are now a respected business partner--one I shall have to treat with care. I commend you for your honesty, young Brightwell. I much prefer to have loyalty and limits stated up front, especially when embarking on such a partnership. Now. How quickly can your father deliver the plans for this printing machine?"

  "Thought you had plans for it," Brendan said. "Wasn't that what you threw the German lad in prison for, drawing them?"

  "The Black Archives, where such things are stored, became a liability. We . . . closed them."

  "Meaning?"

  "The contents of the Black Archives are gone," the Archivist said. "Better that dangerous information be lost forever than inflicted on an unready world, don't you agree?"

  Brendan shrugged. "The more you burn, the rarer the volumes we sell. So that means our printing machine is the only version there is? Interesting. The price might have just gone up."

  "I expected nothing less from you," the Archivist said. "But the price will remain as we agreed. If I find your father has broken trust with me, if these machines appear anywhere else, I will have you executed in a way that will burn in the memory of anyone tempted to cross the Library again, and I will hunt down every single member of your family, however remote, and do the same to them. Your father. Brother. Mother. Every cousin. Babes in arms. Are we understood, Brendan Brightwell? But if you keep your agreement, I will keep mine. Believe me."

  In Brendan's experience of men who thought themselves honest (and rarely were), the phrase believe me was a clear signal they intended to do the opposite of what they said. But he nodded. The black storm inside his head wasn't lessening, and he felt an unsettling tremble in his muscles, but for the purposes of this meeting, he'd have to manage through it. "We'll require immediate payment in Alexandrian geneih, of course. English currency isn't worth much at the moment, given the Welsh rampaging all over our country."

  "Already done. The funds have been sent to the bank your father specified. He has been in contact directly, of course."

  That woke prickles of alarm down Brendan's spine. If the old man was negotiating directly now, what did that make him? Nothing but a hostage. And, most likely, an object lesson.

  "Then are we done here? Because I'd like a stiff drink and something for my headache."

  "I wouldn't drink," the Archivist said. "It would probably kill you just now, and that would be an awkward situation. Best thing to do is to stay awake, stay active, and let it work out of your system. In fact, I'll help with that. Your assistance will be helpful today."

  "With what exactly?"

  "Captain Wahl will tell you. You may go." The Archivist brushed the back of a hand at him, as if sweeping him away like an annoying bug. And just like that, he was forgotten.

  That was one of the more annoying things about this evil old bastard, Brendan thought: he could sincerely threaten to peel your skin from your bones one moment and treat you as beneath his notice the next. And for a moment, Brendan seriously thought about using the dagger he'd lifted from the High Garda captain while she'd been searching him and burying it right in the old man's eye, just for the sheer justice of it.

  But that didn't seem like a wise waste of his life.

  The female captain, the one of the ice-cold eyes and Nordic heritage (and scars), stepped forward and fixed her unsettling stare on Brendan's face. "You're with me," she said. "Step a toe out of line, and I'll leave you dead for crows. Understand?"

  "Charming," he said, and gave her his best grin. "I'm sure we're going to get along wonderfully."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Captain Wahl ushered him out of the Archivist's suite through yet another different path, this one avoiding the Hall of Gods altogether; the Archivist had a frankly annoying number of ways to avoid his enemies, and every path seemed designed to end in disaster for someone bent on disturbing the old man's calm. Wahl's route marched him through a series of nondescript rooms, each looking the same; he supposed they were waiting rooms but could see no signs directing visitors to them. If you have to ask, he thought, you shouldn't even be here.

  "Captain," he said as they passed through the seventh of such rooms, occupied by empty chairs and shelves of Blanks for the entertainment of nonexistent occupants, "exactly what are you planning for me?"

  "If you're worried I'm marching you to execution, I'm not," she said. "But I do have full authority to leave you dead in the road if you try to escape."

  "Yes, you made that very clear; thank you for clarifying. I meant, what is it you want my expertise for, exactly?"

  She didn't bother to answer, only lengthened her stride, which made Brendan simmer; his brother Jess enjoyed vigorous exercise as well as bookish pursuits, but Brendan only liked to run when chased. And her pace seemed designed to punish him for his lack of enthusiasm.

  They came through a doorway guarded by two automata into a stone courtyard; this one wasn't decorated with winsome gardens or floating lotus flowers. It was utilitarian, a rally point for soldiers, and Brendan t
ook quick stock of it, noting the access points, the defenses, and where he stood in relation to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which was plainly visible. He'd need to sketch a map later, but he had a facility for details. And plans.

  Since Wahl seemed unwilling to part with details, he watched her. She seemed comfortable and assured, but there was something about the ten guards traveling around them, spreading out once they achieved the street outside the Serapeum, that made him wonder. She had them on a ranger patrol, looking for threats. Not looking at him. That seemed odd, if he was counted as any kind of threat.

  They encountered nothing, and they made quick time as they jogged through the streets. People and vehicles made way for them, and he felt the heavy weight of stares and knew gossip would be flowing in their wake. Stupid way to travel, he thought, though at least he wasn't out of breath yet. City's full of High Garda carriers. This is doing nothing but flaunting the Archivist's power.

  "Where are we going?" he asked her again, more loudly this time. They'd passed the University districts, headed down from the Lighthouse, and now they were in one of the poorer, more anonymous sections of town, crowded with merchants and cheap, temporary housing that looked ripe to fall at any moment. Cleaner and brighter than London, but he knew the type of neighborhood well. It was where deals were made, both legitimate and criminal.

  "I wanted you because you're said to be connected in the smuggling trade. You might be able to convince your brothers in crime to give up peacefully."

  "We call them cousins, and, wait, are you mad? We're going to raid a smuggler's den? You should have brought more bodies. These won't even provide a good shelter to hide behind once they fall." She sent him an impatient glance and increased the pace, which was annoying. "I'm very serious, Captain. These aren't just idiots hiding secret book collections in their private homes! These are hard people who survive in the hardest city on earth for their trade. You do not go after them like this!"

  "This is just my personal escort, Brightwell," she said. "My army is already waiting."

  "Where?"

  She whistled, and the entire contingent of Elites shifted from a jog to a smooth, quiet walk as they approached a corner. Brendan's nerves prickled, but he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.