Paper and Fire

by Rachel Caine

  Glain, who'd been about to speak, was stunned into silence, so Jess jumped in.

  "What? How?"

  "Poison in the fruit in my room," he said. "No way to know who put it there, but I think we can guess."

  "The Artifex."

  "He's done toying with us, and I think he'll close his trap now . . . He deliberately left us all behind while he went off to the Senate. We're out of time."

  "But we didn't bring all our things," Khalila said. "Can we go back for them?"

  "No. You can't. If you turn back, you stay behind. Are you staying?"

  "Don't rush us," Dario snapped. "It's a big decision, you know, to turn our backs on our futures. Our families. Everything we've ever believed."

  "No, it isn't," Khalila said, and took in a deep breath. "We've been thinking about this for a long time, Dario. I thought we'd already decided where our loyalty had to lie. Mine is with them. Is yours?"

  "Sweet flower . . ."

  "Don't. If you want to go, just go. This isn't the time for your charm."

  Dario studied her and then slowly nodded. "All right," he said. "All right. Yes. We go."

  Santi looked grim, and never more in command. "We go. Now."

  The timing is terrible, Jess thought; he had everything he would carry for a duty patrol, but no extras. The rest of his kit was still back stowed beneath his bunk. It will have to stay there. He'd abandoned more things than he'd kept in his life, anyway.

  "The hallway Wolfe talked about is on the other side of the far wall, the one with the statues," Jess said. "Probably some access. I'd guess behind the statues, through one of the alcoves."

  "According to Wolfe, there will be guards and an Obscurist on duty in the Translation Chamber on the other side of the wall; Glain and I will take care of that. At the end of the hall, there's an automaton and a door. I have Greek fire for the automaton . . ."

  "No," Jess said. "I can get us past it." Santi looked at him and frowned. Jess met his gaze and held it. "I can, sir. We both know using Greek fire in a confined space is risky at best."

  "All right." Santi didn't sound convinced. "Jess will get us past the automaton. After that, the locked door." Jess nodded at that, too. "And then we go down into the tunnel. There will be more automata. Three of them, according to Christopher. Two sphinxes and a Spartan. Can you disarm those as well?"

  "I can get the sphinxes," Jess said. "I don't know about the Spartan, sir."

  "That'll have to do. There are four High Garda on duty in the prison. If I know any of them, I'm going to try to save them, but if not . . . If not, we may have to fight. If it comes to that, let me, Glain, and Jess take the lead." He turned to Jess. "You scouted the tunnel exit that Khalila and Dario discovered," Santi said. "Is it clear?"

  "How did you know I--"

  "I know you. Is it clear?"

  "Yes."

  Santi took in a breath. "Then we go."

  As simply as that, they were abandoning all they'd planned for their lives, all they'd worked toward. For Santi, it meant throwing away an entire career spent gathering honor and trust within the Library. For Glain, the destruction of a dream she'd held since childhood. For Khalila, a future so bright, Jess couldn't bear to think of snuffing it out. Even Dario was giving up something priceless.

  I'm the only one who has nothing much to lose, he thought. He'd already lost all the illusions that had brought him to this moment. What he had left now was just a hope that whatever came after this would prove to be better.

  One by one, they nodded.

  And they headed for the hallway that Jess and Glain had been assigned to patrol.

  "What about Wolfe?" Jess asked. "He's alone in Alexandria. Anything could happen to him there, especially once they know what we've done. He'll be executed."

  "No," Santi said. "It's taken care of. Now spread out and find the entrance." He stepped up to the nearest statue--the one of Minerva--and felt around behind her in the alcove. Jess held back, letting his gaze move over the gods in succession . . . and settling on one in particular. Pluto. Roman god of the underworld.

  He stepped up and felt behind, along the smooth plaster of the alcove. Nothing. But as he did, he braced himself on Pluto's marble arm, and it moved beneath the black toga the statue wore.

  The alcove clicked open.

  "Here," Jess said. "Come on."

  "Dario, bring up the rear. Keep watch," Santi said. He had his weapon ready, and, Jess realized, so did Glain. Jess quickly followed their lead and waited at the opening. "Jess, go right and see to the automaton. Glain and I go left. Dario, Khalila, stay here until we signal."

  Jess ducked through and immediately turned right. The hallway was just as Wolfe had described it in his Mesmeric trance--a long, straight run with windows that overlooked the Forum. Not glass, certainly, because that would make them easy targets for vandals or Burners. These would be made of something harder and unbreakable. No use giving a desperate captive the chance to throw himself out and escape, either.

  Jess heard the lion's rumbling growl before he'd taken three running steps in its direction and slowed to a fast walk. The lion wasn't waiting for him; it was pacing toward him, the cabled length of its tail twitching side to side and slamming into walls and windows. It left gouges where it hit. The creature was a big thing, the same size as the one he'd faced down in the tunnels. Seeing it coming at him in harsh daylight was chilling indeed.

  You know this. You can do this. The problem was that this lion was in motion, and very probably about to break into a run; it didn't have the same confusion the one in the tunnel had shown, and it was not undecided about the situation. It had been built to respond to intruders, no matter what uniforms they wore.

  Jess broke into a run again, closing the distance fast, and ten steps from it, he threw himself into a slide on the slick marble floor. The lion, confused, tried to slow, but momentum wouldn't allow it to check so quickly. Jess slid right underneath its open jaws, which hit the floor with a heavy clang just as his head cleared the space, and grabbed one of the thick metal legs to stop his slide. At the same time, he reached up for the depression beneath the lion's jaw, found it, and pressed as hard as he could.

  He heard the roar that had been building inside the thing skew to a strange whining noise and die. The lion took another step forward and froze.

  Jess pushed himself out from behind it and cut his arm on the tail when he grabbed hold to stand up; the barbed end of it, he realized, was razor sharp. Even standing still, the thing was capable of harm.

  The door lay just beyond--locked, as Wolfe had said. Jess never left without his handy set of picklocks--the lesson of a devious childhood--and pulled them out of the pack and set to work as quickly as he could. He heard the sounds of fighting behind him. Wolfe and Glain must have met with resistance.

  He'd just pushed the last tumbler in the lock when Khalila dropped down beside him and said, "How can I help?"

  "You can get out of the light," he said. "Are they coming?"

  "Yes. Dario went to help them." She stood up and looked back over the lion's shoulder. "How did you know to do this?"

  "What, lock picking? Comes naturally. I'm a criminal, remember?"

  "I meant the lion, Jess." She was waving now, giving urgent hurry signals. "Get the door open--they're coming!"

  They were. He heard the footsteps. Glain, ever the athlete, chose to throw herself under the lion, as Jess had, and slid neatly through, then rolled back to her feet and leaned on the still metallic body to aim her weapon back down the hallway. She fired, and Jess recognized the sound: stunning rounds, not lethal. She didn't intend to kill her fellow High Garda soldiers, no matter what their orders might be.

  Dario came next, and behind him . . . behind him came Santi, and . . . Scholar Wolfe. Wolfe, like Dario, wore Scholar's robes, and his shoulder-length hair had been tied back in a tight knot. "Wolfe?" Jess spared a precious, astonished second to stare at him. Khalila jabbed him in the shoulder to remind him to kee
p working. "How did he get here?"

  "Translation," she said. "Santi wouldn't leave him alone in Alexandria. That would have been a death sentence. Jess, are you sure you can--"

  "Got it," Jess said, as the last tumbler clicked and fell away. "Is he all right to be here, do you think? Wolfe?" He couldn't shake the memory of Wolfe's swallowed screams as the Mesmer tried to calm him. Whatever was buried under that calm, Elsinore Quest had been right: it was poisonous and powerful. Must have been hard to keep it locked away.

  "I don't know," Khalila admitted, as Jess rose and pulled on the door's handle. "I can't imagine how it would feel to . . . go down there. But it's Wolfe. We can't leave him behind for the Archivist, can we?"

  She was right. They were all in it together and would rise or fall together. And Santi was staying close to Wolfe, only a step or two away, as if well aware of the risks.

  Jess slammed the metal door back against the wall and took the lead, heading down a ramp into the dark. As his eyes adjusted, he realized there were lights, just low ones that blazed brighter as he approached--sensing his presence somehow. There'll be three more automata, he remembered. The Alexandrian sphinxes would be smaller than the lions, though no less dangerous. The Spartan . . .

  He didn't know what to do about the Spartan.

  The tunnel twisted to the left, and he looked back before he took the turn. Khalila and Glain were behind him, then Dario and Wolfe with Santi. As Jess turned the curving corner, he saw steps going down. The smooth plaster of the walls gave way to old Roman stone. The lights continued to brighten around them, and Jess moved as fast as he could.

  A High Garda soldier stepped out into his path, and Jess prepared to shoot, but Santi put a hand on his shoulder. "No," he said. "Sergeant Reynolds?"

  The soldier lowered his weapon--not completely, just enough to ease Jess's mind a little. "Captain Santi? Sir, you're not supposed to be here."

  "Let me pass."

  "I can't do that, sir."

  Glain shot him. It was a quick, economical movement, and the stun round dropped the man to his knees. A second put him completely down. Santi checked the man's pulse and nodded. He wasn't happy, but Glain had done the right thing. Talking would get them killed.

  The second soldier who came rushing in fired. Glain shot back, but he was wearing armor, and the stunning shot had no effect.

  Jess had his weapon set to full strength and fired. He put two rounds into the armor, which was enough to knock the man down and unconscious, but--he hoped--not enough to kill.

  A chorus of high-pitched shrieks split the air. There was another blind corner ahead, and beyond it would be the cells . . . and the sphinxes were between them and Thomas. Two of them. How do I stop two of them at once? It seemed impossible now that he was here, listening to the screams coming closer.

  "Khalila," he said. "When the sphinx comes, there's a depression underneath the jaw, behind the pharaoh's beard. You need to press it. They should hesitate, seeing you in a Scholar's robe and a gold band. I'll get the other one."

  She stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes for an instant, then nodded. No discussion, no questions. She stood beside him, ready, as the two sphinxes rounded the corner together, loping out of rhythm with each other but with the same deadly grace. The one making for Jess screamed again and bared needle teeth, but the one on Khalila's side of the hallway seemed confused. She held her hand up to show her gold band. It slowed, cocking its inhuman head.

  Jess feinted to his left, and when the sphinx on his side lunged, he jammed his gun crosswise into the fearsome jaws. One of the paws swiped for him, and he heard Glain shout a warning even as he twisted to avoid it. He didn't dare risk a glance at Khalila. This sphinx wasn't going to hesitate to kill him, and he didn't dare take even a second of attention away. It moved like a snake, like something unnaturally fluid, and his sweaty fingers slipped as he tried for the switch beneath the jaw. He missed, ducked a swipe, and heard metal crunching as the sphinx bit down on the gun. He tried for the switch again and got knocked off balance by a metallic head butt hard enough to send him flying backward. A massive paw armed with razor claws raked a path through the floor where he'd been. He hit, rolled off the wall, and came back low and fast.

  This time, he flung himself around with one arm over the lion's head and swung onto the beast's back. The heat coming from it at this angle felt intense even through the layers of his uniform, but he ignored that, ignored the blood dripping from fingers that had grazed sharp claws on the way up, and wrapped both arms around the thing's neck as it reared to try to throw him off. When it crashed down to four paws again, the mangled gun fell from the sharp-toothed mouth, and the sphinx's head whipped around at an impossible angle to bite.

  He got to the switch, somehow, just before it sank those teeth into his neck.

  As he slid down, leaving the sphinx frozen in that unnatural, twisted position, he realized that Khalila's sphinx was equally still . . . in a crouch, at her feet, like a particularly dangerous pet.

  "Maybe I should let you do this from now on," he said with a grin that felt half-mad, and she let out a laugh at least as uncontrolled. "We've still got one soldier and a Spartan to deal with. Reinforcements will come."

  "Then we should hurry."

  That was a new voice coming from behind them, and as Jess turned, he saw Glain and Santi had beaten him to it with impressive speed. They leveled weapons at the newcomer making her way down the steps, and Santi lowered his weapon first.

  Morgan.

  Glain said, "It can't be. How in Hades did you . . ."

  Morgan smiled, but it wasn't for Glain at all. She was looking through the rest of them, straight to Jess, and the smile was for him.

  "I brought what I could," she said. "But we have to go quickly. I disabled the Translation Chamber to keep reinforcements from coming through from Alexandria, but Captain Santi's troops will respond soon, and we don't want to have to kill anyone."

  "Morgan?" Khalila said, and then repeated it with more force. "Morgan!" She rushed to her and clasped her in an embrace--one that the English girl returned full force. "I didn't think you could leave the Iron Tower!"

  "That's a story for later," Morgan said. Jess couldn't take his eyes from her. How is she here? The Translation Chamber, obviously, but . . . It hit him then that the collar around her neck was gone.

  She was free. Free. Just as she'd said she'd be.

  He couldn't quite believe his eyes, until she pushed past the others and wrapped her arms around him, and then he had to believe it--her familiar, remembered warmth, the scent of her hair, her skin. It felt right, having her in his embrace again.

  Dario, of course, was the one to say, "Not that I'm not delighted to see you, too, Morgan, but can the welcomes wait? We're on a schedule."

  He was right, of course, and Jess stepped away. Not without regret.

  Glain wasn't smiling. She was watching Morgan with cool, assessing eyes, and now she said, "This is strangely opportune timing. I thought it was impossible to escape the Iron Tower."

  "That's what they want us to believe," Morgan said. "There are several ways, actually, but getting the collar off was half the battle. I've spent months searching for a way to get out and stay out. When I found it, I waited until Scholar Wolfe made his move to join you. So the timing is exact. Not opportune."

  "You can understand her doubts," Dario said, which was weaselly of him, sympathizing while still not agreeing. "We haven't seen you since you were driven off by the Obscurist Magnus, apparently never to be seen again. One thing we know about the Library: it's fully capable of turning us against each other."

  "You think you can't trust me?" Morgan's face set hard and she returned Glain's stare, not Dario's. "While you were being pampered and groomed, free to do as you liked, I was locked away. You have no idea where I've been." She touched the skin at her throat: too pale, from long months of being circled by the collar. But the collar was gone. "I left my chains back in the Tower. And I'
m not going back. If you don't think you can trust me, fine--I'll go my own way. But I'm not leaving until I see all of you safely out of here."

  Jess silently moved to her side, because suddenly there were sides, and at the very worst time. It lasted only a second, a terrible second, because Santi snapped, "No time for this. We trust her because we have to trust her. Now go."

  He moved past them, and Glain went with him. Dario and Khalila were next, with Wolfe, who was also--to Jess's slight surprise--armed. The gun blended in with his black robes.

  He seemed to falter a little, as if the memories had overwhelmed him. Morgan held out her hand to him. Wolfe looked at it as if he'd never seen such a thing and walked on.

  "Well," she said, "he's not changed at all."

  "Come on," Jess said. "Dario's right. There's still Thomas to find."

  "I was so worried you'd move faster than I could and I'd be too late," she said, and her grip on his hand grew stronger. Almost painful. "I knew you'd left Alexandria. I was afraid--afraid something terrible would happen to you."

  "To me?" He forced a smile he didn't quite feel. "Nothing ever happens to me."

  "Oh, I remember you collapsing with a wound that almost killed you after Oxford. You don't fool me."

  "Shh." He'd heard a scrape, and his instincts had spiked hard enough to hurt. There was a blind corner just ahead, and Wolfe was already passing the turn.

  The noise had come from behind them.

  Jess pushed Morgan ahead of him, toward Wolfe, and--though he'd sworn seconds ago he never would--let go of her hand. His shove sent her stumbling into the wall at the corner, and she turned back with a surprised expression that turned to horror, and Jess knew.

  He did the only thing he could: he threw himself hard to the side, into the old stone wall, and a sharp-tipped bronze spear stabbed hard down into the floor where he'd been standing.

  The Spartan automaton pulled the spear back with economical grace, turned its head, and the red eyes blazed at Jess from a distance of only an arm's length away. This was no sphinx, no lion; it was in the form of a man, muscled and lean. Upright.

  It slammed its left forearm toward him, and Jess ducked. He didn't quite move fast enough, and the blow that grazed the top of his head made the world go soft and strange. Not pain, exactly, but he knew it was there somewhere, floating like a cloud that hadn't quite rained yet.