Paper and Fire

by Rachel Caine

  The switch, he remembered from the book. He also knew that those razor-sharp teeth, and the massive lion paws with equally pointed claws, ensured that one wrong guess would absolutely be his last. Anit's brothers had both faced this moment.

  They'd both died.

  Jess didn't allow himself the luxury of doubt, because he knew that he was seconds away from death if he did nothing; the automaton's mouth was already opening wider and the eyes burning hotter, and this chance was his only chance.

  He reached under the chin of the human face and felt a small depression. As the sphinx's head whipped sideways to bite his arm, he pressed down hard.

  The head slowed its turn, but the teeth still closed around his arm.

  Pressed down.

  He felt the slicing sting of metal and knew it was too late--he'd lose his arm at the very least. God, no . . .

  But then the sphinx just . . . stopped, with a sound of gears grinding to a halt. The jaws still pressed down, but the bite was shallow, just a little blood and pain that he made worse by having to pull himself free. Jess was panting now, shaking, pouring sweat, and as he watched the sphinx's face, he saw the eyes flicker red, then black, and then go a dead, leaden gray.

  It stood still as the statue it resembled. Frozen on the spot.

  Jess heard the shriek of the other sphinx returning, and launched himself around the frozen automaton. Hedges snapped and flailed at him until he achieved gravel again, and then was running, running, with the gardens falling behind him, and the lonely, angry shriek of a sphinx chasing to the borders of the tomb's park.

  The scream followed him like a vengeful ghost as he lost himself in the streets of Alexandria.

  Sweating and staggering with weariness, Jess made his way back to the port and the Lighthouse. He avoided the guardian automata by climbing the wall--another exertion he didn't savor--and dropping down into the meditation grotto for some god or goddess lost in the dark.

  He found Scholar Prakesh's offices closed and locked. Dario hadn't come back there, and he didn't know where he bunked.

  Khalila was in. He pounded on the door, and it opened to spill him in. He found a chair and fell into it, still breathing hard. "Dario," he gasped out. "Is he back yet?"

  "What happened?" Khalila sank down next to him to catch his eyes. "Jess! You're bleeding!"

  "It's fine." He brushed off her attempt to roll up the sleeve of his jacket. "Where is he?"

  She frowned. "I don't know. In his room, I suppose. You know where that is?" Jess shook his head. "I'll take you. And you can tell me what put you in this state along the way."

  She wouldn't take no for an answer, so Jess did tell her, and didn't spare Dario's folly in the telling, either. She stopped in the middle of a flight of steps to turn and stare at him. "You're saying that you outran a sphinx?"

  "No, I'm saying I couldn't outrun a sphinx," he corrected. "I'm lucky to be alive, and no thanks to our little Spanish prince."

  "Jess . . ." Her lips were parted, but she clearly didn't know what to say to him. "Allah must love a fool."

  "Let's hope that extends to Dario, too."

  She took him down four flights of stairs to what proved to be a residential floor, thickly carpeted and boasting carved doors of cedar that gave the whole hallway a rich, woody smell. She rapped on one of the doors, and it almost immediately swung open.

  Dario was still alive. Injured, Jess saw, but alive. Relief flashed in his eyes when he saw Jess, but he quickly buried it. "Scrubber," he said, and stood aside to let them come in. "Happy to see you still standing."

  "What happened to your leg?" Khalila asked, and helped Dario limp to the bed.

  "I twisted my ankle falling off the damned tomb of Alexander," Dario said. "I challenge you to find anyone else who can say that. What happened to your arm?" That last, Jess realized, was directed to him.

  "Sphinx," he said.

  "You just always have to win, don't you?" The joke was almost a reflex, because Dario stared at the blood and rips on his jacket with real concern. "Is that a bite?"

  "Their teeth are like razors, in case you ever wondered," Jess replied. "But I learned something important."

  "That I'm a fool?" Dario asked bitterly. "I'd have thought you already knew. You've said it often enough."

  "You're not a fool, just a dilettante at what I've been doing all my life," Jess said. "Never mind. We're both alive. That counts."

  "Did you get the book?" Jess shook his head, and Dario's expression set into a grim mask. "Then it was all for nothing. I got a man killed for nothing."

  "Not exactly," Jess said. "I know how to turn off an automaton."

  EPHEMERA

  Text of a coded, self-deleting Codex exchange between Morgan Hault and Jess Brightwell How could you be so stupid?

  Don't blame me. I said it was a bad idea. I'd give you two guesses whose idea it was, but you won't need them.

  I know you could have said no. You can't take these kinds of risks! The High Garda commander nearly caught you. I saw the report. I knew it had to be you.

  Not every foolish thing in Alexandria is my fault.

  Please tell me you got something out of it.

  Nothing I want to tell you this way, even if you're erasing these messages. Too dangerous.

  Try not to let him talk you into any more of this.

  Careful. I might begin to think you care.

  I always have.

  Morgan, tell me what I need to do to make it right between us. Please.

  There's nothing you can do. I'll do what I can for you.

  I want to help you!

  . . .

  Morgan?

  -X-

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was the heavy middle of the next night when Jess's Codex chimed, bringing him groggily awake. He turned on a glow and paged open the book to see a new message writing itself out in round, professionally inked letters. Recruit Jess Brightwell to report to the Office of the High Commander in fifteen minutes.

  Now? He felt a lurch of unease. People disappeared conveniently in these barren hours. He remembered finding the disarranged state of Thomas's room back at Ptolemy House at a similar time of night, a smear of blood on the floor. Easy to be just . . . gone. But avoiding the summons would be inadvisable at best, impossible at worst, and he couldn't let them see fear. What if they know? What if we've been identified from the park?

  It felt like dressing for his own funeral, but Jess donned a clean uniform and stepped into the hall . . . to find Wu, Bransom, and Glain already there, as well as the remaining members of their squad. Helva was still in the infirmary, and Tariq--his absence echoed loudly between them just now.

  "High Commander's office?" Wu asked. Jess nodded. His eyes met Glain's for a moment, and he knew she was just as unsettled as he was. She'd taken the news of his near death with calm, but had also known, just as he did, that it might have been a temporary escape.

  "Form up," Glain said. "If this is our last time together, then we do it right." She meant it both for them as a squad and as a personal message to him. Jess appreciated the sentiment.

  The squad fell into stride through the long, clean hallways, past the turn that led to their quarters and off into wider, more lush spaces, and then into the courtyard where the Spartan turned his head sharply to focus on Jess as he passed. Jess refused to look at the thing. Instead he kept his concentration on keeping stride with Wu and Bransom and trying not to think why the squad--the whole squad--had been so summarily summoned.

  The High Commander's office was in a tightly guarded central building, one that required presentation of their official Library bracelets to a seated sphinx automaton twice Jess's height--an eerie thing that stared at Jess from the lifeless simulation of a human face with utterly alien eyes as it examined his credentials. A growl of discontent rumbled somewhere deep inside the thing as it stared at him, a vague and terrifying dislike that might, at any moment, break into a full-throated shriek and baring of those needle tee
th. Did it know? Could it? Do the sphinxes communicate somehow?

  Evidently they did not, because the sphinx turned its attention to Bransom, the next in line. It took a real effort of will for Jess to turn his back on the thing and walk. Glain, having her own bracelet examined last, caught up to him in several long strides and whispered, "Near thing."

  "But still a miss. I'm beginning to believe that they just like me."

  "Automata don't like or dislike anyone. They're machines!"

  "Not completely," he said. "Thomas once told me that they . . . think. It's not just gears and steam in there. It's something else." He itched to open one up now that he'd read that coded volume, full of tantalizing hints about how the thing worked inside. Thomas would have had exactly the same impulse; the German boy was an expert at mechanical things, constantly breaking down and building up their inner workings. He'd been fascinated with automata. Still is fascinated, Jess corrected himself. He isn't dead.

  The group marched together at a brisk pace down clean stone hallways, inset with alcoves filled with warrior deities from around the world--African, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Celtic, Norse, Roman, Japanese, Russian. Finally, at the end of the hallway, in pride of place, outsized golden statues of Horus and Menhit, the local Egyptian war gods. The floor beneath their boots, shining and clean, was a mosaic design of sphinxes, and at the end, in the rounded vestibule of the High Commander's office, the Great Library's seal shone gold, inset in the marble. The place smelled of metal and oil, with a faint, acrid smell of chemicals and gunpowder floating above like fog. The smell of war. Jess still preferred the crisp, dry scent of paper and leather.

  This is the end, he thought, and wondered if the others were thinking the same thing. This is the end of my time at the Library. We've been held hanging, and now the sword is about to fall and cut us loose.

  My father will never take me back.

  Glain stepped forward to knock on the huge ebony doors, but she didn't need to do so; they swung open without a sound, and after a bare instant of hesitation, she squared her shoulders and led the way in.

  It was a long march through a very large room. Displays of arms and armor and vast shelves of Blanks lined the walls. At the far end of the space, in front of a wall inscribed with rows of hieroglyphs that looked millennia old, sat a desk with crouched lions for legs.

  An old man sat behind it.

  He watched as the four of them snapped to attention, and as he stared at them, Jess revised his judgment. The High Commander wasn't that old; his hair had gone a glossy gray, with black threading through, but it was like a layer of snow on concrete. His shoulders were still broad, his body straight, and he had large, scarred hands that had seen plenty of hard use. The High Commander was of African heritage, with skin so dark it held overtones of blue in the lamplight, and startling hazel eyes that looked as sharp and clever as Scholar Wolfe's.

  "Recruits," he said. There was nothing but a Codex and a single folded paper on his desk. "Until your final test, your squad demonstrated an outstanding amount of potential."

  "Sir," Glain said. "Permission to speak?"

  The High Commander's gaze fixed on her, and Jess was very glad it wasn't aimed at him. "Denied," he said. "You are here to listen, Recruit Wathen, and not to provide me with excuses. To continue: this squad had a great amount of potential. The last test was, in fact, designed to simulate an ambush of your squad by hostile forces while you were in the performance of regular duties. In the course of that exercise, one of your squad was killed, and another injured. Is that accurate? You may now answer, Wathen. Briefly."

  "That description is accurate, sir," Glain said. There was no emotion to it. She stared into the distance, somewhere over the High Commander's squared shoulders.

  "The exercise was designed to test your innovativeness, your toughness, your responsiveness, your team's bonds. How do you feel that you performed in light of this, Recruit Wathen?"

  "Sir, our progress toward our goal was steady and careful, and when presented with the unexpected challenge of Greek fire, we took cover and returned fire. We followed procedure. We defended our Scholar at all costs."

  "Ah," the High Commander said, and leaned back in his chair. "The Scholar. There comes the interesting twist in this tale: you were not assigned a Scholar or anyone representing one. Scholar Wolfe's intrusion into this space was unauthorized and introduced random factors that call the entire exercise into doubt."

  "Permission to ask a question, sir," Jess said, and pushed forward before he could be told no. "If Scholar Wolfe wasn't authorized to be there, then how did he get in?"

  It was a simple and revealing question, and the High Commander stared at him unblinkingly for a moment. Jess could almost feel the rest of his squad trying to shift away from him without moving a muscle.

  "Scholar Wolfe forged credentials to allow himself access. We are still investigating the matter." Clearly, he wasn't happy about Wolfe's refusal to cooperate further. The closed Codex on his desk hummed for attention, and he paused to consult it, then closed it again.

  Glain took advantage of the distraction to say, "The Greek fire wasn't at exercise strength, sir. It was fully dangerous. And we are well aware that one of our own was meant to take out Scholar Wolfe, and died for failing. It's a testament to our squad's determination and training that this ambush did not succeed. Sir."

  "Your argument is that your squad succeeded, Sergeant? At the cost of one dead recruit and one seriously impaired, possibly unable to return to duty?"

  "We are sworn to fight and die in service to the Library. Recruit Oduya tried to shoot our Scholar--a Scholar who, whether supposed to be there or not, was nevertheless our responsibility. So yes, sir. We did succeed."

  "Do you then accept responsibility for a traitor within your own squad?"

  It was a trap, and in the hard silence that fell, Jess struggled with an impulse to blurt out a defense. Glain wouldn't thank him.

  After letting the stillness weigh on the room for a moment, she said, "I do, sir. If Recruit Oduya was compromised, I should have seen that and acted before he was able to commit such a crime. His death is on my hands, and I accept all responsibility."

  "I would expect nothing less of someone in command." The man's voice had a low, rumbling timbre to it, and Jess could well imagine how it would echo across a messy battleground, rasping orders and shouting encouragement to his troops. Like Glain, a born leader. Don't throw her away, Jess thought desperately. She deserves better. "At least you understand your duty, even if you failed to adequately perform it. Recruit Oduya did indeed receive additional payment from an unknown source, no doubt to act as Wolfe's assassin. He was backed up in his heinous crime by another, as yet unknown individual who was responsible for the shot that killed him. The same individual no doubt substituted full-strength Greek fire for the exercise formulation."

  Despite their training, Jess felt the squad shifting around him, exchanging glances. Glain stayed still and focused. Waiting for the ax to fall.

  "After much consideration and debate, it has been determined that this squad was not at fault for the outcome of this exercise, and no punishment shall be assigned to the team as a whole. Recruit Brightwell, you first spotted the danger to the Scholar and protected his life. You also risked your own life to fetch assistance for fallen colleagues. Few of the regular ranks could have done better under the same circumstances. You are to be commended for your actions."

  Jess blinked. This had taken him entirely by surprise. He wasn't used to open praise.

  "Squad Leader Wathen, you commanded your team well under difficult circumstances, but because of your failure to spot this traitor within your team, you are hereby lowered in rank. You will no longer enter the High Garda at the rank of sergeant as was originally contracted, but as a common soldier. Nevertheless, I do not feel your failure warrants dismissal from the High Garda."

  Glain let out a breath, a slow and trembling one. She didn't relax, but Jess could feel the
wave of relief coming from her all the same. She'd have to give it all up if they went after Thomas, but that would be her choice. Failure would have been humiliating.

  For the first time, the High Commander smiled. It only made him more daunting. "Your squad kept a Scholar--whether he should have been present or not--alive. That matters. That is everything, except for the protection of original books, which would take precedence even over the life of a Scholar. And for that, I have decided to accept this exercise as your final test."

  Jess didn't dare speak this time, but after a long pause, he heard Wu say tentatively, "So . . . we passed, sir?"

  "You passed," the High Commander replied. "You will each receive your individual assignment soon via Codex. Squad dismissed."

  In a way, passing the test was more of a shock than failing; at least Jess had been properly prepared to be sent on his way, without a future. He couldn't process the moment fast enough to really comprehend what had just happened. He'd gotten so used to assuming the worst that having the best actually arrive was somehow wrong, coming on the heels as it did of the escape from the tomb--and what had almost been his own tomb--in the park.

  "Brightwell," the High Commander said, and caught Jess in midturn. He spun back to face front. "A moment."

  He heard Glain's footsteps hesitate, but only for an instant, and then she was gone. The door shut behind his friends, and he was alone with a man who could destroy his future in a breath.

  At least he was used to that, after Scholar Wolfe and his harsh postulant training. And before that, life with his own father.

  Jess stood perfectly still, perfectly at attention, while the man regarded him. Finally, the High Commander reached for a folded sheet of paper on his desk. It was sealed with gold, and stamped with the symbol of the Library. Jess opened it. His hands were steady, though his heartbeat jumped faster when he saw the name written at the bottom--a personal signature, not just a scribe's notation.