Ash and Quill

by Rachel Caine

  Santi nodded, acknowledging the good wishes but clearly not wanting to discuss them. "You realize that once you build this for Beck, he could easily reverse engineer it?"

  "Yes, we've taken all that into account," Thomas said. "And it won't even be our fault, really."

  Santi's smile started small, then grew. "You two," he said, and it sounded like affection. "You have an alarming talent for destruction."

  "Learned from the best," Jess said, and grinned back. His whole body ached, but he couldn't deny that seeing Santi alive and relatively well had done wonders for his spirits.

  He also didn't miss the worry that Wolfe was trying hard to conceal. As usual, Captain Santi was pushing himself. And Wolfe was trying to hold him back, for his own good. That sounds familiar.

  Thomas wiped sweat and smoke from his face with a rag that was already well sooted. He looked, Jess thought, like the ancient Greek god Hephaestus, stripped to a bare, ash-streaked chest, with a heavy hammer in his hand.

  "Too bad you can't demonstrate it for me," Santi said. "I'd have liked to see it print something."

  "I'd have thought Scholar Wolfe would have demonstrated the one he built to you . . . ?" Thomas asked.

  "I was away when he was working on it," Santi said. "Training a new High Garda company in Belgium. I knew he had an important project, but not the specifics."

  "That ignorance saved your life," Wolfe said. "They'd have killed you if you'd ever laid eyes on it."

  "Most likely," Santi replied mildly. "When I returned from my assignment I found Chris gone, with all his work. You know the rest."

  The rest: imprisonment, torture, erasure from the records of the Library--for a Scholar of Wolfe's caliber, it was the assassination of immortality, the burning of a life's work, and for what? For being brilliant. For being exactly what the Library stood for in the first place. It gave Jess a hot ache in the back of his chest, like an unvoiced shout. Such a waste. It was all such a waste.

  He still couldn't come to terms with the harsh, awful fact that it had been going on this way for hundreds of years. The Archivists, generation after generation, eliminating anyone who threatened their hold on power--like Thomas, and Wolfe. Two examples that a thousand years earlier, the Library would have elevated and celebrated.

  Santi's calm acceptance of that left Jess chilled, even in the heat of the forge.

  "When will you be ready to demonstrate?" Wolfe asked. Thomas exchanged a quick look with Jess and raised his eyebrows.

  "I don't know. Two more days?"

  "Tomorrow," Wolfe said. "I'd rather you soothe Master Beck's anxiety sooner than later. The more nervous he becomes, the more he'll want to grandstand for his people." That was all true, but Jess thought there was the tiniest hint in Wolfe's expression, in the way he avoided meeting Jess's eyes, that it was more than that. Wolfe was playing his own game. Again.

  "We can manage it for tomorrow," Thomas said. "If you're sure of the timing."

  "He's sure," Santi said, and gave them a small, determined nod. "I'd best go get some rest now."

  They were speaking around the subject, for the benefit of the female guard sitting in the corner. She was, unlike Diwell, all too alert.

  "Yes," Wolfe said. "Come, Nic. We'll leave them to work."

  Thomas slid his goggles back on and silently returned to the forge, but Jess watched in silence as Wolfe helped Santi up. The captain's weakness was alarming. Tomorrow's too soon. But there were reasons that Wolfe wanted the timeline to be set just this way, and Jess felt the sick foreboding inside spiral up into real dread.

  Tomorrow, everything was going to change.

  They got nothing at all for dinner that night. The guards got nothing either, and said--with barely concealed anger--that as a precaution against inclement weather, rations were being cut. For the present, only the ill, elderly, and very young were to be fed.

  It was horribly late when Jess was able to stagger, half-hobbled, back to his bed, but the letters had been carved, the molds made, and the metal poured. Now they had two long, neat rows of letters and numbers in English and in Greek, and his muscles felt as if they were coated in Greek fire. He was unconscious and uncaring for four hours before something--he wasn't quite sure what--brought him groggily back to the world. When he tried to sit up, the muscles that had been hot and painfully tight had hardened into poured concrete, and moving seemed like a terrible idea.

  Morgan stood looking down at him, and as he got enough awareness to identify her, he also saw the stark exhaustion on her face. She sank down to a sitting position when he didn't get up, and leaned against the frame of the bed.

  "God," he whispered, and sat up. "What's happened?"

  "Don't," she whispered back. "Please." Her hands were shaking, even as they rested in her lap. He saw tears glisten faintly in her eyes. It was blushing dawn outside, and the new light should have been kind to her, but it only made her look more broken. "It had to be done. It had to be. But the cost, oh, Jess--"

  "Morgan, what did you do?" She just shook her head, and he knew she wouldn't answer. Not now. She shivered all over, a convulsive movement that worried him even more. "Have you even been to bed?" he demanded. Her skin felt very cold. Icy. "You're freezing. Come here."

  "I need you to finish the Codex with me. We have no more time. Please."

  "After you're warm," he said, and moved the blanket. "Morgan, please. Get in."

  She hesitated, but then she slipped in beside him. He moved over to give her the room, and she rolled toward him as he adjusted the blankets over her shivering body. "This feels good," she told him quietly. "I'm just so cold."

  He put his arms around her and pulled her close--not to kiss, just to hold, and felt the shuddering sigh of relief that came out of her. He could feel bones beneath her skin. She was just too thin. Whatever she was doing, whatever it was that had alarmed her so much . . . it was washing her away, like sand in water.

  She was holding something in one hand, and it was trapped between their bodies. He recognized the shape: a book. The Codex she'd sewn together, with her Obscurist's script written and bound inside it. Waiting for the burst of power she'd give it to bring it to life.

  "Morgan, you're too weak to do this. You need to rest. We'll find another way," he told her. "I'm not going to watch you set yourself on fire for us." He did the only thing he could think of: he kissed her, and tried to tell her without words how much she meant to him.

  His existence narrowed to the taste of her mouth, the silky softness of her lips, the gentle tension of her hands on his back. The dark added to her mystery as he slid his palm over her arm, her waist, her hip, to draw her in the shadows. In this predawn silent world, she was the only thing real to him just now--every sense devoted to memorizing the scent of her, the taste, the touch. The sigh of her quiet breath against his skin. Taking away sight made every other sense come alive to him, and it felt like a dangerous kind of magic.

  And then she broke free of the kiss and whispered, "I'm sorry, but there's no choice," and then he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his arm. A red starburst of sensation, and then a glow was forming around Morgan's hands, and in it he saw she had a thick needle in her hand, and from it hung a single drop of his blood.

  He watched the crimson drop tremble there in the dawning golden glow of her quintessence, and then it fell through the light, flaring white as it passed. It landed on a page of the book she'd opened to catch it. It splashed into a vivid red blotch and absorbed without a trace into the paper.

  He was close enough to feel the cost of what she did. Her whole body shuddered. The little warmth she'd managed to absorb from him rushed out, as if she'd been plunged into icy waters, and her eyes . . . her eyes went dead for a moment, as distant as those of a corpse floating beneath the waves. Then she blinked and dragged herself back, and the golden glimmer around her hand died . . . but not before he saw black threads woven into the glow, pulsing like veins. Like rot.

  "Here," she whispered, and put
her head wearily on his chest. "Take it. Use it. There's no more time, Jess. Please. You have to get us help, and we must get out of here."

  The raw desperation in her voice hurt. He drew in a breath and held her close for a second before he sat up and stepped out of bed, and made sure that she was wrapped as warmly as he could manage. She seemed small, lying in his bed. Broken and vulnerable.

  Despite the urgency, he had to limp a step before the too-stressed muscles unclenched in his legs enough to allow him to walk. Thomas wasn't in his bed after all; he must have gotten restless in the night and slipped out to the forge. He was probably still there, oblivious to the time and his own exhaustion. This close to the completion of a project, he'd be driven to finish it. No matter what.

  Jess sat on Thomas's bunk, cleared his mind, and focused on his brother, his almost-mirror twin, and opened the book. He realized as he did that he had nothing to write with . . . but Morgan had thought of that, too. The blue feather he'd given her for a bookmark lay in the crease between the pages, and he picked it up and pressed it to the page. There was no ink in it, of course, but a dark dot appeared, shimmering around the edges with a faint gold light that made it easy to see even in the dimness. He wrote his first message. Ta for nothing, brother. You could have tried to get me a message, at least. The words were light, but he felt ashen inside. Seeing Morgan broken this way shook him in ways nothing else could.

  His words faded and left a creamy, empty page behind.

  He didn't have to wait long for Brendan's reply to appear, as if an invisible pen wrote in fast, looping letters. Da says hi. Hopes your limbs are all attached. I did try to get you a message. Intercepted by Beck. We've made offers for your return. Brendan didn't express anything about his own worries, but then, he wouldn't. That wasn't how things worked between the two of them, identical in looks, far from it in temperament.

  Generous of you, Jess wrote. Where are you?

  Close, Brendan replied. Assuming no one else can read this?

  Just us.

  Good. Because what I'm about to tell you stays quiet, yeah? Santi's company is here. His lieutenant found some Burners in London to question and found out where you'd gone. She got the whole company sent to duty on the wall.

  Jess stared at the words for a long, long moment. He didn't quite know how to take that in. They've joined the High Garda encampments? They're here?

  Just said so, Brendan agreed. I'm with them. We're hiding in plain sight, brother.

  You said Santi's lieutenant . . . Zara? Jess wrote the name with too much pressure and nearly broke the tip of the quill. You can't trust Zara. She's loyal to the Library. Nearly killed the captain, before.

  Yeah, she told me. She's dead sorry about it. Changed her mind after the Artifex Magnus decided to execute a few of her soldiers for disloyalty. She's not the only one who's turned on the bastard, plenty of unrest erupting all over these days. Details later. I trust you have bigger questions.

  A full High Garda company would be a blessing, no doubt about that, but Zara Cole? Santi's lieutenant hadn't seemed all that trustworthy the last time Jess had seen her. In fact, she'd been willing to shoot down every one of them, and all hail the Archivist.

  But beggars couldn't be choosy, if the beggars wanted to live out the day.

  We need a tunnel out of here, Jess wrote. And didn't like the delay. It took a solid minute of molasses-slow time before Brendan's answer appeared.

  Yeah, well, he said. Little bit of a problem with the tunnel.

  What problem?

  We don't have one.

  I know. It belongs to the Comprehensive.

  No, there is no tunnel. The Comprehensive destroyed the last one after the High Garda twigged to its location. They haven't finished digging the new one yet. No way out through a tunnel. I'm sorry.

  Jess . . . hadn't expected that. At all. We need that exit, brother. We need a way out. They must have something!

  You'll find a way, Brendan repeated. When you do, tell me where. We'll get in position to cover you. If you can wait a few weeks--

  We don't have a few weeks. We'll be dead long before then. Jess paused and then wrote, I think we have to do it today.

  TODAY?! Brother, this is not making me feel calm.

  Jess let out a little huff of a laugh, too quiet to be heard. Me, neither, Scraps. Me, neither. But have faith.

  He waited for Brendan's usual comeback. It was always the same, with varying degrees of anger: Don't call me Scraps.

  But instead, when the message appeared, it said, God be with you, brother. Get me a message when you can. And then, after a blank line: Don't go and die on me. I wouldn't know how to tell Da.

  That, Jess thought, was as close as he was ever likely to get to an I love you from his own brother.

  He put the feather in place and closed the book, and sat for a while, drinking in the stillness, the quiet.

  When he was ready, he added Thomas's blanket over Morgan's body. She was deeply asleep. She'd never looked so alone, he thought, and he hated Wolfe, purely and completely, for doing this to her. He wanted to crawl in beside her and hold her, but there wasn't time. There never is, he thought bitterly. And for one wild moment, he wanted to just forget it all, close his eyes, and pretend for another hour that it wasn't all moving too fast.

  "Jess. With me." Scholar Wolfe was standing in his doorway.

  Jess followed him. As he did, he saw that Dario's bunk was empty, and so were Glain's and Khalila's. "Where is everyone?"

  "Off on business," Wolfe said. "Inside."

  Jess stepped into the cell Wolfe shared with Santi. Despite the repairs, it had a glassy, melted look to the stone, and there was still a faint, cloying smell of Greek fire here that made him want to cough. Santi, seated on his bunk, noticed. "Not so bad once you get used to it," he said. "You've been in touch with your brother?"

  Jess looked down at the Codex he still held, with Glain's boot leather binding it, scarred and rough with use. "He says the tunnel's not an option."

  That got Santi and Wolfe to exchange a fast, grim look. "Narrows our options to one," Santi said. "The wall. But that means we have to fight our way out of a High Garda camp. I don't like those odds."

  "They're better than you think," Jess said. "Brendan says Zara Cole's here. She brought your company. He says we can trust her."

  Wolfe said, "The hell we can," just as Captain Santi said, "I think we should." That led to a strange silence, and the two of them staring at each other. Wolfe spoke first. "Zara's loyal to the Library. She shot you."

  "She could have killed me, and she didn't," Santi said. "Believe me, Zara chose that shot carefully. It meant she wasn't convinced then. If she's here, she's convinced now."

  "Maybe she's convinced that we need to have our heads on pikes; have you thought of that?"

  "I know how you feel about her, but--"

  "Nic! This isn't some petty jealousy. I don't trust her!"

  Jess said, quietly, "Doesn't really matter, does it? She's our only real chance. Brendan's with them. If we tell them where to meet us, they can cover our escape if we can get through the wall. If you've got another choice, say so."

  Wolfe glared, but he shook his head.

  "Tell your brother we're coming out at the eastern end of the wall, just behind the grain storage," Santi said. "Dead-on east. They'll need time to arrange the move, if they need to move camps. A few hours at most."

  Jess nodded, but he was looking at Wolfe. "If nothing goes wrong," he said. "But something has, hasn't it? I saw Morgan. What happened?"

  "Something that wasn't her fault," Wolfe said. "But it shortens our timeline considerably. Tell your brother we're coming this afternoon. There's a storm moving in. It's better cover than we'd hoped. If you can summon Beck midafternoon, he'll bring his counselors, and many of the guards. While you're about that, we'll be quietly leaving. Once it starts, we can't break off. We're committed. You understand?"

  "Yes," Jess said. "Midafternoon."

/>   "Try to spin it out until the storm begins," Santi said. "And have a way out of that workshop besides the door. Understood?"

  "Morgan does nothing else," Jess said. "Let her rest as much as you can."

  "We all have our parts to play," Wolfe said.

  "Really? And what's your part, Scholar? Because from where I sit, you've done nothing but use her."

  "Jess," Santi said. He leaned toward him and held back a wince as he straightened his arm to push himself forward. "Believe me, none of us is clean. None of this will be easy. The others already know their jobs. Now we're telling you yours."

  "Kind of you to include me."

  "You were included," Wolfe said, with a sharp whip in his tone. A barbed one. "You and Thomas had to remain focused on the press and that invention of Thomas's. That was imperative." He took a tightly rolled scroll of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out. With a jolt, Jess recognized the map that Khalila had drawn from memory. Wolfe pointed to a building she'd painted black, hugging the eastern wall behind city hall, on the far side of the fields. "This is where we'll rendezvous."

  "You realize that we're planning to burn a hole in a wall that's stood for a hundred years," Jess said. "You realize what that's going to do."

  Santi said, "It's out of our hands. The wall can be patched, and the city will have to hold on the best it can. Believe me, I don't want more death on my conscience."

  "But this won't be bloodless," Wolfe said. "And we have to look out for ourselves now. Agreed?"

  Another Brightwell family motto, Jess thought bitterly. He opened the book, sketched the map, and gave Brendan the approximate time, along with the warning to stay well back from the wall.

  When he looked out the window, he saw that dawn was coming cold and steel gray, and Wolfe was right: there were black clouds massing on the horizon.

  The storm would be on them soon enough.

  Jess headed for the workshop. Inside the dark, smoky confines, he found that the forge had been allowed to sink back to coals, and the tiny amount of Greek fire that they'd been given to keep it burning had been carefully stored back in a padded box. Jess started to pocket it. There was no sign of Diwell, oddly enough.