Ash and Quill

by Rachel Caine

  Jess flinched as Thomas clapped a huge, strong arm over his shoulders. "That girl," Thomas said, "is going to be very good for someone. I hope it's you."

  "Oh, get off me, Mountain," Jess groused, but he wasn't angry. He was, in fact, feeling better. "Let's find a bucket and wash."

  "And eat."

  "If you want to call it that."

  Once they'd washed and taken a meager meal, Jess slipped into Morgan's cell. She was sitting cross-legged on her mattress, and it pleased something deep inside to see that she, too, had chosen a book from Dr. Askuwheteau's vast collection. Hers was a biography. She smiled when she saw him, and closed her book.

  "Here." He pulled out a blue feather he'd plucked from the grass outside. It was a rare piece of beauty in the dull rust and brown of Philadelphia--bent, but unbroken. The moment he'd spotted it on the walk back, he'd known it was meant for her. "I saw Wolfe using one as a bookmark. It seems appropriate."

  The way her tired face lit up in joy felt like standing in sunshine, dazzling and warming. "Thank you." He hated to see the smile go thinner, more tentative. She moved over, he slid in place beside her, and she lifted the book to show it to him. "Askuwheteau said he gave you a book, too."

  "Fiction," Jess said. He watched her twirl the small blue feather idly and brush it against her cheek. He imagined the softness of her skin under his fingers and quickly looked away to put a stop to that. Not the time. He had more serious things to discuss. "You didn't tell me Beck made you an offer to stay."

  "He made all of us that offer."

  "Not like he made to you," Jess said. "Your own home? Askuwheteau told me."

  She didn't quite meet his eyes. She concentrated on twirling the feather in her fingers. "Are you afraid that I'll take it?" He didn't answer. She risked a glance at him, and he saw half circles like bruises under her eyes. Darker today than yesterday. "I won't. Even though the idea of a real home is appealing."

  "Nothing's safe here."

  "I know."

  "Did you find anything inside city hall? Any sign of tunnels?"

  "Nothing. I'd hoped--but if there's anything there, I couldn't see it. Tell me how you and Thomas are doing."

  "We're a day or two from being ready with our work. But we need that tunnel."

  "The wall is almost ready," Morgan said. "I spent hours at it today." She hesitated, on the verge of saying something; he saw doubt in her eyes.

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  "It isn't."

  "It's just that--" She fell silent, twirling the feather in her fingers. "It's hard, what I'm doing. Exhausting, I admit that. And today it felt . . . different. I couldn't concentrate as well, toward the end."

  "That's because you're running yourself too hard," Jess said.

  "Says the pot to the kettle. But it has to be ready."

  He took her hand and held it. "Morgan. I don't have a smuggling tunnel where I can leave a message out to my family. I can't communicate with anyone outside these walls. There are High Garda camped out there. Even if you do get the wall weakened, even if Thomas's mad invention works, what then? We walk into the arms of the Library?"

  "You know, you're both depressing me," said a new voice from the door of the cell. Glain stepped in and leaned against the bars. "Sorry. Hard to have a private conversation in here, since these walls are not just paper-thin, but actual paper." She was right. The thin pages torn from Blanks that Beck had given them to make their cells into proper rooms weren't soundproofing. Weren't even much of a modesty screen. "What are we weeping about now?"

  "No way to contact anyone outside these walls," Jess said. "So there's no point in escape, if we just die out there rather than in here."

  "It's a fair point," Glain said. "We can pass for Scholars and soldiers."

  "The Scholar robes are ashes," Morgan pointed out. "And I'd expect the Archivist would have our likenesses in every Codex by now."

  "What about your family?" Glain asked Jess. "Would they help?"

  He shrugged. "Honestly? I don't know. Beck was going to write to my da, but he hasn't said anything yet about a reply."

  "But your family knows we're here."

  "Presumably, if Beck kept his word."

  Glain sank down into a comfortable, cross-legged position on the floor. "Then you just need a way to talk to them secretly, right?"

  He gave her an exasperated look. "That's what I was saying."

  "Thick," she said, and shook her head. "What exactly do you think is pasted up behind me?"

  She tapped the papers fixed to the bars of Morgan's cell. Jess glanced at them, then her, and lifted his shoulders. "Paper?"

  Glain plucked a sheet free. Then another. Then another. She gathered up a handful and gave them to Morgan. "Now what do you have?"

  Morgan's turn to shrug this time. "I don't understand what you're getting at, Glain."

  "How exactly does a Codex work?"

  It was a ridiculous question on the face of it, but Jess and Morgan put it together at the same jolting moment. Jess looked at her. Morgan stared back. "A script written by an Obscurist," Jess said.

  "In the binding!" Morgan finished. "My God, why didn't I think of it?"

  "Because you're tired, and I'm smarter than you think," Glain said. "We can stitch together the pages; I'll sacrifice my extra shirt for the thread, if Thomas can forge us a decently thick needle. For the binding . . ."

  "Glain," Jess said.

  She ignored him, focused entirely on Morgan. "For the binding, we can use the tops of my boots. Good leather. I remember the Turks once destroyed a library for the leather covers to make marching shoes for their troops. Seems fitting to do the opposite."

  "Glain!" Jess nearly shouted it, and both of them looked at him with identical expressions of surprise and annoyance. "No."

  "Why not? It's perfect." Glain swung her look to Morgan, who nodded. Of course she would, Jess thought. He felt sick.

  "I can write a touchstone script to narrow the communication, one to one. The Library won't be able to see it."

  "And we can send a message to your brother," Glain said to Jess. Her eyebrows rose. "Problem solved, and why are you looking at me like I killed your sainted grandmother?"

  He fought not to throw Glain out of the cell and slam the door behind her. "Morgan's done too much already."

  "Jess." Morgan put her hand on his. "No one else can do this. Stop. Stop trying to protect me."

  "Fine, then we'll do it in the morning," Glain said. She pulled out a set of faded, much-bent playing cards. "That gives you the entire night to rest up. Jess? Care for a game?"

  "A game?" Jess repeated. He'd gone from stunned to furious--with Morgan, for volunteering again to overextend herself, with Glain, who didn't seem to understand the point at all. "No. I don't." He cast a look at Morgan that begged for her to change her mind, to understand that she was destroying herself, but she held his gaze without flinching. All he could see were the dark circles beneath her eyes. The slight tremble in her hands.

  He was right; she'd lost weight these past few days. If you burn, you'll burn fast. Askuwheteau's words to her. Was she already on fire, somewhere deep inside? How long before she failed, or something worse happened?

  "Jess, please," Morgan said to him. "Please stay."

  I'm not going to watch you burn, he thought, and went to his cell. He wrapped himself in blankets on his cot as the others sat down to play. All of them. Even Thomas.

  He'd never felt exiled from their circle of friendship before, but it made him remember that if they succeeded, if his brother came through, if their plans worked, if they escaped from Philadelphia . . . then there was far worse to come. And he, Dario, and Morgan would have to lie to everyone to get it done.

  This is what it will feel like.

  Maybe he needed to get used to it.

  EPHEMERA

  Excerpt on the subject of theories of printing from a work by Scholar Plato, interdicted and sent to the Black Archives. Restricted
to the eyes of the Archivist Magister.

  . . . familiar with the common practice of inscribing notes upon tablets of soft wax, which it seems childishly simple to reproduce upon a fabric surface. A simple application of dye upon the tablet produces, when impressed upon fabric, a reverse of the letters inscribed upon the tablet. I have seen children playing at such games, pressing molds into the mud to make objects of great delight. Surely there is therefore a way to inscribe such letters in reverse, and when dyed and impressed upon the fabric, to create a record that may survive, rather than a tablet that is wiped and reused daily. We copy information to scrolls, yes, but this is still subject to error, and each copy must be made with time and skill.

  We must find a way to save for later generations the knowledge so laboriously written and rewritten. We must find a way to easily and quickly copy, for the more accurate reproductions we make, the better our chances of such knowledge surviving our lifetimes. Scrolls are prone to mold, to ruination by water and fire, by storms . . . and so are the lives of men.

  Our words must live after us, if we are to lift ourselves up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Glain woke Jess screamingly early, when dawn was still just an idea on the horizon. She put a finger to her lips and beckoned him up, past the still-sleeping Thomas, and then out. The guards stationed there came to alert, but Glain said, "We're not going anywhere. Just over here, to the corner."

  The woman on duty nodded and went back to sewing up a cut in a piece of cloth, but she was no fool; all her attention stayed on the two of them as they walked over a little distance.

  "If this is about last night--," he said, but she cut him off with an impatient gesture.

  "There. Look." Glain crossed her arms as she stared at the repaired but clearly melted and misshapen corner.

  "There, where? What am I supposed to be seeing?"

  She didn't bother to answer, only gave him a cool side eye that he knew all too well from their time in training. She expected him to work it out, so he tried, staring until his eyes ached.

  And then he got it. "That's . . . not right."

  She nodded, clearly pleased she didn't have to bang his head into the melted wall to make him recognize the truth. "Why not?"

  "Is this rhetoric class? Who died and made you Scholar Wolfe?"

  "Shut up and answer the question. If you can."

  "All right," Jess said. "This damage isn't the same. If the Library had launched a bomb from beyond the walls that landed here, the whole prison should have gone up, not just this one corner." And, he thought with a chill, that would have killed everyone inside. It had been a miracle only Santi was badly hurt, but he'd been so grateful for the miracle, he hadn't really thought about anything else.

  Glain handed him a sharp-edged piece of age-clouded glass. When he reached for it, she said, "I took it from the rubble. Careful. There's still residue." She transferred it to him, and he held it by one small corner, lifted it to his nose, and sniffed.

  The odor was unmistakable, an oily blend of sweet and rotten. He coughed it out and handed it back, and Glain slipped it into a folded piece of cloth that she concealed in a pocket of those truly unfashionable trousers she'd acquired. "Greek fire," he confirmed. "But the glass is too thin to have been thrown by any ballista."

  "Exactly. It was a bottle of the stuff, tossed by hand from . . ." Glain measured off paces, moving back as she stared at the damage. Nobody, Jess realized, seemed to be paying attention to them, but he was suddenly very aware of what Glain was saying. "About here."

  She exchanged a look with him, and he understood her meaning perfectly. Someone had stood within these walls and tossed that bottle. Someone inside Philadelphia had tried to kill them. It hadn't been a ballista on the other side of the wall with blind lucky aim. They'd been targeted, very precisely.

  Jess was too angry to speak, so he just nodded, stuck his hands in his pockets--a habit he had, when thinking--and rocked on his heels. "Do you think that was done on Beck's orders? Or by someone acting on impulse against us?"

  She sighed, as if he were utterly hopeless. "Jess. Grow a brain. That glass for the bomb must have been at least, oh, this large--" She described it with her hands, and Jess nodded to accept the estimate. "Glass is precious here. So is Greek fire. So who has those things freely available?"

  "Beck."

  "And it would have been filled with liquid. Heavy, yes? Someone came prepared. And I don't think he'd have done it without authorization."

  "Beck knew a Library bombardment would come, sooner or later. He must have, if he had someone waiting with the Greek fire." He mimed pitching an imaginary bottle at the prison's roof and, in his mind's eye, saw it tumble and shatter on the corner . . . not in the center of the roof, where it would have done its worst. "Which is why the angle of impact is all wrong for a bombardment bomb. But he knew the Library would be attacking and trusted that to cover his tracks. Trusted no one would look closer."

  "You seem proud to have figured it out. That's mildly charming," Glain said. "I don't suppose Wolfe would have given you full credit, so I won't, either. But yes. This was planned, cold-blooded attempted murder."

  "Do you think they were specifically after Wolfe? Or Santi? Or both?"

  "I don't think Beck much cared," she said. "He thinks that without them, we'll be easier to manipulate. He's probably bloody disappointed that it only resulted in a wounding, which means he could try again. We need Wolfe and Santi back with us. Now." She hesitated, which wasn't like her. "Let's talk about Morgan. Specifically, that you're trying to hold her back."

  "Not funny, Glain."

  "Stop thinking like a lovestruck idiot; she's a weapon. She can build us a channel to communicate with your brother. Let her do the job she needs to do, all right?"

  He turned toward her. Hands out of his pockets, body set as if he expected her to attack. He saw her shift to match it. It was probably unconscious. Probably. "I'm not willing to break her to serve the rest of us. We do that, we're no better than the Archivist."

  Glain's expression didn't shift. It was calm and set and confident. "Flavia chose to pick up the knife."

  "Flavia stood on the corpses of everyone who died first trying to protect her. So think about that a moment." His tone had gone so hard, cold, and final that he scarcely believed it was his.

  "Flavia was a child," Glain said. "And you don't have a moral right to treat Morgan as one!"

  It was a poisonous argument, done in whispers, but fierce enough to cut. Jess didn't acknowledge her point. He was already walking away, with long, angry strides--not to the prison, but toward the workshop. As he passed her, the female guard stood and walked after him, tucking away the cloth and needles. When he reached the door, he fumbled for his copy of the key. His fingers felt thick and clumsy, but he finally managed. He was angry, but he knew it was for all the wrong reasons--because he was frightened by what Glain had uncovered, by the fact that Beck was more than willing to kill them for his own purposes. And because she was right about Morgan. Of course she was.

  He just didn't want to face it.

  When he looked back, Glain had gone inside the prison. Good. He didn't think he could stomach being next to her another moment. He felt betrayed, and stupid for feeling it. The fact that he was wrong was going to haunt him. Is there no way that this ends well for Morgan? She was being used, either by the Library, which at least took utmost care of her, or by him and the rest of her friends, who didn't.

  He hated that he couldn't protect her. That, in truth, he didn't have the right.

  So he went into the workshop, stripped off his shirt, stoked the fire, and began forging letters for the press instead.

  Jess threw himself into the work. Nothing else to do, and it was pure physical labor, blanking his mind and erasing the worry that was never far away now. He hardly noticed time passing. Thomas joined him, and they didn't speak--well, Thomas tried, but Jess was in no mood for it.

  It wasn't until half the day was go
ne before he asked, "Is Morgan making the Codex?"

  "Yes," Thomas said. "I made a needle for her earlier. Glain cut the leather for the binding from her boots. It's a good idea--"

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "Morgan requires a drop of Brightwell blood to link it to Brendan."

  "I'm damn well not doing it."

  "Jess," Thomas said. "Look at yourself. Your fingers sliced open getting the glass for us. Burns and bruises on you. You've gone to skin and bones because you're giving me your food, and don't think I haven't noticed. We all have to risk things. All of us. Together."

  It's different, Jess wanted to insist, but he couldn't. It sounded hollow, and Thomas, of all people, knew him too well. So he went back to work and tried not to think.

  He was so focused that he nearly missed the arrival of their visitor.

  "Hard at work, I see," said a voice from the door of the workshop, and Jess, sweating from the constant pulse of heat from the forge, wiped perspiration from his face, blinked to focus.

  Captain Santi stood in the doorway. Well, stood was an exaggeration. He leaned both on the wooden frame and on Scholar Wolfe's shoulder, and without both of those supports he likely wouldn't have stayed upright for long.

  He looked better, though. His arm had been bound up in a sling, and even at this distance, he smelled quite oddly of honey.

  Jess helped Wolfe ease Santi down onto the only bench. "Oh, stop hovering like I'm broken," Santi snapped; there was a tight flush to his cheeks from the effort spent making the walk. "I've taken worse than this."

  "Liar," Wolfe said, but briskly, as a statement of fact rather than an accusation. "I know all your glorious war wounds. You've never been burned this badly."

  "And I've never had honey and moldy bread smeared on my skin, either. It's a week for new things." Santi turned his gaze to Jess. "So. Progress?"

  "We're almost done," Thomas said as he left the glow of the forge; he wore a makeshift apron made from an old quilt, and mittens of the same material, and an eye covering he'd made from scavenged pieces of leftover broken glass and bits of cloth. He was glowing with sweat, hair glued tight to his head with it, and his grin looked exultant as he stripped off the extra layers. "Captain. I'm so glad to see you better!"