Smoke and Iron

by Rachel Caine

  "I did." Khalila sat on the back step of the truck and stared out at the street. They were looking at the sweep of the Cadiz Serapeum, which had been designed by the famous architect Gaudi; it was a fabulous structure in the shape of a coiled dragon, with shimmering blue-tiled scales and a snaking roofline that outlined the dragon's back. Beautiful, and somehow very suited to this odd, lovely country. The rain was still falling in a steady, relentless mist, but at least the winds had passed, and the temperature was a bit warmer. She was still grateful for the heavy coat that the palace guards had pressed on her.

  She was also grateful for the weapon in the coat pocket. A Spanish pistol, heavy and full of brutal promise. She preferred swords, but she'd studied with pistols as well. She could do what was needed.

  "I think we're going to need prayers," Glain said. "The king was right. We've opened the gates of hell, you know. And what comes out now is our fault."

  "Is a fire the fault of the man who drops a match, or the one who spilled the oil all over the floor, knew it, and left it there?"

  "Scholar arguments. I'm practical. We started this, and now it's a war. We need to prepare for that."

  "You don't think we have a chance?"

  Khalila looked directly at her friend. Glain's hair had grown out and was curling at the ends. Glain had little time for appearances or romance, though in her own way she did love those around her; it was only that the love she felt was expressed as loyalty, fidelity, and friendship.

  "I think we haven't begun to understand the costs of what we're doing," Glain said. "But you point me at what needs to be done, and I'll do it. I'm a soldier. You, Khalila: you're a politician."

  Khalila laughed. "I am not!" But she was, of course. She'd grown up moving through a political family, in a highly developed political society in Saudi Arabia. And the politics of the Great Library had simply seemed familiar.

  Glain sent her a look that was part wry amusement, part exasperation. "When they talk about who will lead the Library, you realize that the Curia will have to go, don't you? Not just the Archivist. They've all been complicit in what he's done, all these years. At the very least, they're weak. At the most, they're as bad as he is. So we have to find not just his replacement, but the heads of all the specialties, unless they break ranks and join with us--and even then, we'll have to be careful of spies and traitors. Some of them will want us dead, even in defeat."

  As usual, Glain and Santi had the same view of the tactical situation, and Khalila had to admit that it was . . . not encouraging. "We need to preserve. That's our first objective. Protect the books."

  "It's what we swore to do," Glain agreed.

  "But we also should protect our brothers and sisters who might not understand what they're fighting for. We didn't. Not until it was too late." Glain nodded, but it didn't look like wholehearted agreement, either. "You don't want us to do this."

  "I don't want any of us putting ourselves out as easy targets," Glain replied. "There's brave, and then there's stupid."

  "Which am I?"

  "That depends."

  Khalila turned to meet her eyes over the rifle. "But you'll look after me."

  Glain pulled in a breath and slowly let it out. "Stupid, then."

  She stood up. "Don't tell them until I'm gone."

  "Khalila--"

  She shook her head. "We can win this with force, or we can try to win it with the power of an idea. I want to try that first. I need to do that first, for my soul."

  Glain muttered something in Welsh that Khalila only vaguely understood, but it sounded grim. "I'll see you buried according to your faith, if it comes to that. And shoot the brains out of anyone who hurts you. That's all I can do, for my soul."

  "I know that, Sister."

  Glain's grin came like a burst of sunlight, and was just as quickly gone. "Chwaer," she said. "If you want to be accurate. Though I don't suppose you'll ever learn to pronounce it properly."

  "Chwaer," Khalila said back, with what she thought was a surprisingly good attempt. "Don't let them stop me."

  She stood up and walked around the truck, keeping it between her and Santi, who'd be the first to spot her movement and guess her purpose. She was aware of Glain moving behind her--finding a good vantage spot, she thought. Something high.

  There was an automaton pacing in front of the gates of the Serapeum. It was a sphinx, which meant they'd likely brought it from Alexandria; it froze when it saw her and turned its pharaonic head in her direction. She didn't pause. She walked steadily forward. The sphinx didn't attack, but it crouched lower, those baleful red eyes glowing brighter.

  "I have come to talk," she said. "I am Khalila Seif, Scholar of the Great Library, and I come to talk."

  She heard a shout from behind her in the distance. It rang down the street, from wet cobbles and the looming stonework of the buildings rising on both sides. She was afraid and trembling, and she wanted very badly to turn and run back to the safety of her friends.

  Dario was calling her name in a sharp, panicked voice.

  "Let me in," she said. "At the very least, you gain a hostage. One the Archivist wants very badly."

  For a moment, and the sphinx only crouched lower, and she could see the hard cables that served as its muscles flexing beneath that bronze skin. I know what to do if it attacks, she told herself. She remembered Jess's instruction and felt a little steadier. A little stronger. She could freeze that automaton in place with a touch and walk in looking as powerful and mysterious as an Obscurist.

  If it didn't take her hand off first, of course.

  "Khalila!" Dario's shout was closer. He was running toward her. She heard the crack of a rifle shot and a yelp and backward-pedaling footsteps. Didn't dare take her attention from the automaton, but she prayed Glain hadn't deliberately wounded him. No, she'd have placed a shot neatly at his feet and forced him back to cover. He'd think it was a Library sniper. Hopefully. That would keep all the rest back as well. "Khalila, love, get out of there!"

  "I'm coming inside," Khalila said to the sphinx, and took another step.

  It rose from its crouch, turned, and glided toward the gate.

  She followed, and as she passed the barrier of that open courtyard wall, she pulled in a breath that smelled of rain and iron and rust, and a phantom hint of blood. There were gardens surrounding the Serapeum, thick with late-blooming flowers and trees whose turning leaves still clung to branches. It was a beautiful place. She imagined what it would be like after a battle to take this place. Churned, broken, and destroyed.

  No. This cannot happen.

  Ahead, the sphinx moved with a silky lion's stride to the closed, thickly barred gates . . . which silently opened. The automaton paused outside of them, watching her, and as she passed it, the thing bared needle teeth in an unmistakable threat.

  She stepped inside, and the gates slammed together behind her with incredible speed and force, and she very nearly cried out at the ring of the iron . . . but she stopped where she was, just a foot or two inside the sacred Serapeum grounds, and caught her breath. Her heart was speeding faster now, and she allowed herself to take in where she stood in the small respite.

  This close, the form of the building did look like a resting dragon, with the wide entry hall its long, narrow head, and a pair of slitted yellow windows above glowing to give the illusion of eyes. A terrifying symbol of power, this construction; on a day less grim, on an occasion less dire, it might have looked beautiful, but the clouds and rain had stripped all ornaments away to show the pure menace beneath.

  And I have walked in alone.

  They let her wait for a long few moments before she felt--rather than saw--someone approaching her from the side. She turned her head without moving any other muscles that might get her unnecessarily killed and saw a uniformed High Garda soldier training a weapon on her. A turn to the other side confirmed what she already knew: there was another there as well, angled so that her merely ducking wouldn't kill them in a crossfire. She su
spected there would be a third somewhere invisible up higher in the building's serpentine roofline.

  Khalila folded her hands and waited for the real negotiations to begin.

  It took another few moments before the door opened in the dragon's mouth, and a small old woman in Library robes descended the steps with the help of a cane. She was of Japanese ancestry, and her robes reflected the cultural style of that land; her cane, Khalila noticed, was carved with the shape of a dragon's head.

  There was no mistaking the gold band around the woman's wrist.

  Khalila bowed low, and the Scholar matched it to a careful degree less deep. She carried an umbrella in her other hand, though she didn't offer to shelter Khalila with it. The older woman's eyes were calm and unreadable.

  "Scholar," Khalila greeted her.

  "Scholar," the other woman said. "You demonstrate disregard for your own safety. How did you know we wouldn't simply have you killed?"

  "I didn't," Khalila answered. Quite truthfully. "I hoped."

  The woman was motionless for a long stretch of seconds--long enough that the chill began to eat at Khalila's nerves. But then she said, "I am Scholar Murasaki Shirasu. I am aware of who you are, of course. Not your scholarly accomplishments, which are slight, but your actions, which loom much larger."

  "I'm honored to have come to the attention of the great essayist Murasaki at all," Khalila answered. "As to my accomplishments, I am too young to claim any."

  Murasaki gave her a slow smile. "Humble and elegant," she said. "And you do not rise to the bait. Come inside, Scholar Seif. Let us warm ourselves with tea, and you may present your case not just to me, but to the High Garda as well. I doubt you will ever leave us again, but that was, of course, your choice."

  Khalila didn't answer, because she couldn't think of anything that wouldn't betray her uncertainty.

  She followed Scholar Murasaki into the dragon's mouth.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The first thing the High Garda did the instant she crossed the Serapeum threshold was relieve her of her pistol, of course; she had expected as much. She had not quite expected to be facing so many drawn weapons--ten, at her count, though those were only the ones she could see--and she raised her arms and stood very quietly for the search, which was so thorough even Glain would have been impressed. Scholar Murasaki ignored all of it and walked across a wide, intricately inlaid wooden floor to seat herself in a carved wooden chair next to a stand that held a chained, oversized Codex.

  The smell of the place overwhelmed Khalila for a moment with helpless longing. Books. The crisp, lightly spiced smell of pages, as constant in the air here as incense. The entry hall was immense and rose in a rounded, organic bubble. It was topped with a huge blue curved window with gray that spiraled in like smoke. Gorgeous and odd. This entire Serapeum was a delight.

  I can't let this be destroyed. We have few enough things to feed our souls.

  "Clear," the soldier said, and stepped back. He was a blond young man who topped her by a head and twice over in breadth. Unlike the angry man in Philadelphia, he hadn't insisted on the removal of her hijab, but then, Spain was a deeply cosmopolitan country, with seeds of the culture of Islam in its arts, architecture, and food. She felt more at home here than she ever had in the Burner camp.

  "Is she the one with Obscurist powers?" asked a dark-skinned woman wearing librarian robes. She sounded anxious, and she was hiding in the back, behind the row of weapons. As if I might bite, Khalila thought.

  "I am not," she replied. "My friend Morgan Hault is the Obscurist, and she has been taken to the Iron Tower in Alexandria. Scholar Wolfe is, we assume, in prison and awaiting execution. You have nothing to fear from me, I assure you. I come only to talk."

  "About what?" That brought someone else out of the shadows: a tall, scarred man with shockingly red hair shaved close to his skull. One of the scars ran a white ridge through the left side of his head. No librarian, this one; he wore High Garda armor and uniform, and command like a mantle. "Because if you're here to talk to us about giving up the Serapeum for the Spanish to loot, you know better."

  There was something of an opening in what he said, she realized. He didn't simply condemn her and order her arrested. He was listening.

  So was Scholar Murasaki. The gravity of the situation suddenly descended on her, freezing her in place, and she took a moment to compose her thoughts. Think. What will convince these two very different people?

  "I have never been here before," Khalila said. "To Spain, or to Cadiz or this Serapeum. Yet the moment I stepped inside, it was familiar to me. It was home. I look at you, and I don't see enemies. I see those who value what I do: the preservation and distribution of knowledge. The delights of discovery and the honor of guardianship. You are the Great Library; you are its heart and soul, spirit and blood. And I would rather die than see you, and this place, desecrated when I can prevent it."

  They didn't say anything at all. There was no reaction. And Khalila closed her eyes. "There is a rot at the heart of what we love. It is not the knowledge or the preservation of it. It is the notion that only we can decide what is worthy, what is not, what is progress, and whether or not it should proceed. For thousands of years, the Archivists have told us that all we have here is all there can be. But it isn't. I saw. I know." She turned to Murasaki, whose face was thrown into stark, aged lines by the light cascading in from above. "Do you know the poet Murasaki Hiroko?"

  "I do not. There is no such poet."

  "But there was," Khalila said softly. "I saw the manuscript, Scholar. She wrote poems to her lover, but her lover was another married woman, and at the time the Curia deemed them unfit for distribution. When she protested, they told her to destroy the work. She refused, and wrote more poems calling for the end of censorship by the Great Library. I read them. They were rotting in the Black Archives. If you don't know of her, it is because she was simply . . . erased."

  She felt the shift of tension--the wrong way. "Nonsense," the red-haired captain said. "No such thing. The Black Archives are a fable told to frighten children and interest conspiracy-minded crackpots."

  "It was vast," Khalila said. "Story upon story of shelves, all filled with works the Library deemed seditious or dangerous. Confiscated from the Scholars who wrote them. Locked away, to rot in darkness and silence, all those books silenced. I saw it. I was there. I read Murasaki Hiroko's poems, and they were--" Her voice faltered and broke, and she took in a gulp of air. "They were searing and angry and brilliant. They were beautiful. And now they're gone."

  This time, the silence felt heavy, and it lasted a second too long before Scholar Murasaki said, "Gone. But you claim they were in the Black Archives."

  "They were," Khalila said. She had tears in her eyes now. "Where they'd been kept for almost five hundred years. But once we had been there, seen them, the Black Archives were no longer secret. And the Archivist ordered them all destroyed rather than let them see the light of day."

  "You're lying," the captain said. "The Library does not destroy books. We're not Burners."

  "But we are," she said, and let the tears come, the grief cascade out of the locked box she'd kept it in. "We are. That is the ugly, filthy truth; the Library decides, in secret, what should be read and what shouldn't. What should be destroyed if it poses a danger. I watched those books burn. Hundreds of thousands of books, row upon row, all turning to ashes . . ." She couldn't speak. She tasted tears and struggled not to cry. "We saved what we could. It wasn't enough."

  "What you're alleging is heresy," the Scholar said. For the first time, she sounded shaken. "Heresy at the highest levels of the Great Library."

  Khalila wiped her tears with shaking hands. "I told you what I saw. I will swear to it under any oath you say. You may question me as much as you like; I will tell you the truth: I saw the Black Archives burn on the Archivist's command. There is no greater sin than--"

  "What you are saying is heresy!" That was from the librarian who'd been hiding in
the back but who pushed forward now. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, and she leveled a pointing finger at Khalila. "You and your friends, you betrayed the Library. You abandoned your posts. And you've been declared outlaws and enemies! You took refuge in a Burner city, of all places! Why should we believe anything you have to say, especially when you claim the Black Archives actually exist?"

  "Have you never had a doubt?" Khalila ignored the librarian, because now she focused on the High Garda captain. "Have you never been given an order you thought was wrong? Never arrested people without understanding what they'd done to deserve it? Never seen Scholars vanish, their work mysteriously gone? I've seen the prison under Rome. I've seen how the Library treats those it fears."

  He didn't reply, but she could see the flicker in his gaze. She'd hit a mark--how deeply, was the question.

  "Is Captain Santi still alive?" he asked.

  "Yes. Do you know him?"

  "I did."

  "Do you respect him?"

  "I did before."

  "You still should. He has never compromised his beliefs."

  "He's in open rebellion against the Great Library!"

  "No. He is seeking to spread the knowledge that has been denied to us by generations of Archivists. He seeks, as I do, to preserve the ideals of the Library, from which we've long ago strayed. We seek to bring the light of knowledge back to what is now a dark room. And I came here to ask for your help."

  Murasaki stirred. "We cannot support rebels."

  "I am not asking that at all," she said. "I'm asking that you preserve this place. Use it as it was always meant to be used. Open it. Don't listen to the orders of the Great Library, which tell you that the people around you are your enemies, that we are your enemies, that the king of Spain stands outside to destroy everything you love; he doesn't want to do that. He wants to see this place remain exactly as it is." She turned back to the High Garda. "Are your orders to advance on Madrid?"

  He didn't answer for a long moment, and then he said, "Not yet. First, our orders are to find you, Santi, and the others and send you through the Translation Chamber to Alexandria, where you'll be held for trial."