by Rachel Caine
"Jess, I'm going to let you loose," said Glain's voice close to his ear. "And if you try to take my knife away, I will punch you so hard you'll never wake up. Understand?"
"Glain?" The fog was lifting. The close, stinking room wasn't a room. The ground wasn't shaking. He was in a High Garda transport, and they were moving at a good rate of speed over rough ground, and he was safe. "Why the hell am I tied up?"
"Because nobody wanted to cradle you like an oversized baby while you slept," Dario said. "Surprisingly enough."
"You'd have cracked your head open bouncing around, as rough as the travel is," Glain observed, and he felt his left wrist come loose, then the warmth of her body as she bent over him. "I wasn't going to be the one washing your brains off the floor. There. Sit up and do the rest yourself."
His eyes were adjusting now to the very low lights. It was just enough of a pale glow to see shadows, hints of faces, and the glint on the edge of the knife she was holding out to him.
Jess sat up, took it, and cut through the restraints around his ankles. He'd been lying on a stretcher, taking up space in the middle of the floor. As he tried to get up, the transport lurched and nearly sent him pitching at the wall; hands from either side steadied him. "Thanks," he muttered, and sank down into an empty seat along the side. He passed Glain's knife back to her, then snapped the restraints in place for the seat. It didn't make the ride more comfortable, but it did make it safer. "How long was I out?"
"Two years," Dario said.
"Shut up," Glain said. "All night and half the day." As if it were taking her cue, the dull hissing of the transport's engine suddenly changed gear to a lower, more throbbing speed. "We're stopping to let Askuwheteau's people off from the second transport."
Thomas was in this vehicle; Jess could see him curled uncomfortably in the small space. Dario. Glain. His twin brother, who wasn't saying a single word. Khalila was close, and she offered her hand to him silently. He took it and squeezed. Santi was driving the transport, and Wolfe sat beside him.
There was no sign of Morgan. There was an empty seat where she should have been.
"Before you ask," Khalila said, "the doctor felt it was good to keep her in the other vehicle. But she will be moved here now. How do you feel?"
"Better," he said. It was true; he did feel better. He could draw a breath without coughing, and some of the feeling had come back to his burned hands.
"That's good, because the doctor wasn't going to let the two of you in the same cabin until you were," Dario said. "No idea why. Care to share?"
"No." Jess knew. He remembered the burn of Morgan's touch. The explosion of fluid in his lungs. She'd tried to help, and nearly killed him. "I'm all right."
"We're stopping," Glain said. She climbed past Jess, slid open the door of the transport, and hopped down before Santi had brought it to a complete halt. Jess had to blink against a sudden blast of daylight, and tried his balance once the vehicle had rolled to a stop with a hiss of steam. Not too bad. He jumped down and walked after Glain. Behind him, the others were coming out, too. Thomas was last, looking relieved to be released from confinement.
There was another transport directly behind them, and as Jess watched, Dr. Askuwheteau descended from the driver's position and slid open the side. One by one, his people came out. They'd all changed clothes, sometime since Jess had succumbed to the drugs . . . Most wore a mixture of plain cloth and soft leather. Askuwheteau wore the same patchwork coat he'd had in Philadelphia. He'd unbraided his hair to fall loose over his shoulders.
Seven survivors of a dead city. Three were children, but Jess couldn't judge how old they were. They were too thin, small for their ages. None of them said a word, not even Askuwheteau's housekeeper.
Askuwheteau tossed something to Captain Santi, who caught it out of sheer reflex. It unfurled in his hands. The Medica robe. "You saved us," the doctor said. "We don't forget. But we'll never wear the colors of our enemies again."
"Where will you go?" Khalila asked him.
"To our people in Boston," he said. "And we will tell what we know. What we saw. Within a week, there will be no safety for any of the Library here in this country. If the Archivist believed he could stop us by that slaughter, he doesn't know us at all. We will fight."
"We'll all fight," Khalila said. She took another step forward. She was wearing her black Scholar's robe, and it rippled like shadows in the breeze. "When you go to Boston, you will carry the word of what happened. You will become symbols of what the Burners will become--for better, or for worse. I beg you to think of that legacy, and the future we will share, because one day, we will be friends again, Dr. Askuwheteau. One day, the Library will meet with you in peace, and we will bury our dead together. We are not your enemies. The people in the Serapeums are not your enemies. Please remember, when you tell your stories, when you start your fires, that we saw your home, we saw the love you had for books. Remember that for each of us, that love is why we are here. Why we exist. And remember that we see you, and we grieve for you."
There was something mesmerizing about her in that moment, Jess thought; she seemed taller. Stronger. More real than ever before. It was impossible to look at Khalila Seif and not believe her, not feel the compassion that flowed out of her.
She bowed to the survivors of Philadelphia.
Askuwheteau stood there for a long, silent moment, staring at her. "You are my enemy," he said to Khalila at last. "But you have my respect. I will think on what you say." He picked up a small leather pack from the grass by his feet. "But you should go. Because if any of us find those wearing the sign of the Library here past tomorrow, I may not want to protect you. Anger is like the fires that still burn in my city. It will take time to die."
They watched them walk away in silence, until the Lenape and his small band of survivors were lost from sight, and then Khalila sighed.
"I think he means it," she said. "We should go. As fast as we can."
"You know what you did?" Santi asked her. "That man is going to become the new leader of the Burners."
"I know," Khalila said. "And someday, we will have to sit in a room with him and make our reparations for what the Archivist has done. Better we start that now, before more blood flows."
Wolfe said nothing. He watched her walk back to the transport with Dario before he said, "Our children are growing up very well."
Santi laughed softly. "And I said you'd never make a good father. Come help me get the girl."
"I'll do it," Jess said. "You're still half-healed, Captain. Thomas?"
"Ja," his friend said. He was still staring after Khalila. Jess couldn't really tell what he was thinking. "I'm coming."
Morgan was asleep, but as they drove on, she woke up. Khalila had taken the seat beside her, displacing Dario, to Dario's annoyance. "Better I talk to her," she told Jess. "The doctor said to keep you away from her, for now."
"Why?" Dario asked, suddenly and irritatingly interested.
"None of your business. Khalila, I'm fine. I'm better." And surely, the reason that Morgan's talents had turned on him had been because of his damage. Not hers. He didn't want to believe that.
She seemed all right, he was relieved to find. Exhausted, despite the drugs, or because of them, and she dozed for the next two hours, until Brendan got up from his place near the rear of the vehicle and pushed forward to lean over Santi's shoulder. "We're coming to the coast," he said. "You've followed the map?"
"He's a High Garda captain," Wolfe said. "Of course he followed the map. Probably better than you could."
Brendan shrugged. "Just checking. All right. You should see the cliffs coming up soon. There'll be some thick brush blocking the way. We'll need to clear it. It covers a switchback path down to the shore."
"And you're certain there's a boat."
"Oh, I'm very certain."
It didn't take long for Santi to ease the transport to a halt, and Brendan was out the side door, with Glain hot on his heels. Thomas went, too.
"It isn't because I don't want to," he said. "Morgan--until you're fully in control again--"
"I know. Best I don't touch you. Or anyone else." She looked down at her hands, loose in her lap. "I didn't mean it, you know. Killing the fields. I was so tired, and I had to find the energy, the power, to keep going. I didn't know I was taking it from living things. Does that make me a monster?"
"No," Jess said. "It makes you powerful. You saved our lives, weakening that wall. If you hadn't, we'd never have left that city. We'd be ash and bone."
She nodded wearily. "I don't want to hurt anything else. Anyone else." Her smile didn't warm her eyes. "I don't ever want to hurt you."
He wanted to cup her face in his hands and kiss the doubt and anguish from her, and for a moment he thought he might, until Thomas leaned the door in and said, "You'd better come. Now." His friend had a tense look on his face, and that drove everything else out of Jess's mind. He forgot and offered his hand to Morgan to help her down, and the momentary press of their skin made her take in a sharp breath and quickly withdraw. She pulled well away after they hopped out of the transport.
"What?" he asked Thomas, who jerked his head toward the trees to the south of where they were standing.
A tall, handsome man stood there dressed in a flowing black Scholar's robe, with white Arabic garments on beneath. He had one hand on a large, gilded pole, and at the top fluttered a gold-fringed flag.
The flag of the Great Library. The all-seeing eye. Next to him, sitting on its haunches in the whispering tall grass, was a large bronze automaton lion.
Khalila said, "Cousin Rafa." Glain and Santi had drawn weapons. Jess did, too, but none of them were pointing them. Not yet.
"Khalila." He nodded. "Captain Santi. Scholar Wolfe. I come in peace."
"Guns back in your holsters," Santi said, and put his away. Brendan swore softly. "I mean it. Shoot a Scholar under a Library banner, and I'll be the one shooting you. Understood?"
"Fools," Brendan said to Jess. "Your friends are fools, you realize that?" He lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. "Get to the transport. We can't outrun the thing, but it'll have a harder time gutting us before we can kill it."
It was good advice, but Jess didn't take it. He stood where he was, watching Santi. Watching Khalila, who looked stricken. Her cousin, for all his pronouncement of peace, looked like a man who could handle himself in a fight if it came to it. He had a High Garda-issue gun on one hip and a fairly impressive sword on the other. Not quite completely peaceful, then.
"Peace is given when peace is received," Santi said. "Hello, Rafa."
"Niccolo." The Scholar nodded. He planted the banner in the ground with one decisive thrust and left it there to sway and snap in the wind as he crossed his arms. His black silk robes fluttered and spread in the breeze, too, giving him an almost unnatural air, as if he were half made of smoke. "It's been a long time since you guarded me on my journeys, but I hope we're still friends."
"I hope so, too," Santi said. "It depends on why you're here."
"I'm here to beg my cousin to come home," Rafa said, and looked at Khalila. "You had such promise, little one. Such a bright, bright future. And you've thrown it away, for what? For friendship? For some false ideal? We want to bring you home. Me, your uncle, your father. You need to come with me. Now."
"How did you find us?" Jess asked. The Scholar's black eyes shifted to him, then dismissed the question. "Who sent you here?"
"You know who sent me," Rafa said. "The Artifex Magnus, whom I serve. Whom you all serve. I'm not the only one who was dispatched, if that eases your mind. There are messengers at the seaports, and I bribed smugglers to tell me the most likely place a ship loyal to the Brightwells would dock. He thought you would have survived, you see. And he wanted to be sure you understood that you have a choice. You can come home. All of you. Before you bring more disgrace down on yourselves and your families."
Khalila said, "I don't think you're one to speak of disgrace, Cousin Rafa. I remember that my uncle had to buy you a pardon from prison. Twice."
"You're very young," Rafa said. "And the young are often stupid. If you live through this, it's possible you might come back to find a place in the Library once more. I did."
She shook her head. "Not while the Archivist Magister sits in that chair."
Rafa sighed and moved his attention back to Santi. "And you? Have you really betrayed everything you've been loyal to all your life?"
"When it betrays me first? Sometimes one has to take a stand."
"Ah, but is it really your stand?" Rafa's gaze moved toward Wolfe. "I know you're doing it for love, but it borders on obsession, the way you come running. Is he really so wonderful, to make you betray everything you believed in?"
Jess recognized the perfectly friendly, chilling smile that came on Santi's lips, and the tone that went with it. "Well, since you're asking," he said, "he is. Why? Jealous?"
That volley hit. Rafa's face went tight.
"Enough," Wolfe said. "If you have something useful to say, get on with it. If you're trying to bait us into a fight, it won't work."
"I think it might, with a little encouragement. But you're correct; we should move to business." The Scholar reached into his robes and came out with a scroll case. It was made of finely tooled leather, and he opened it, reached in, and then smiled even wider as Glain and Jess drew their sidearms at the same moment. "Peace, peace. I am no Burner," he said. "Though that seems to be company you prefer these days. It's only paper. Nothing more dangerous than that."
It was an official Library document, that much was clear, heavy with ornate braids as well as seals, and the Scholar offered it with a certain formal respect. Santi accepted with both hands, just as respectful, and then both retreated a few steps--the Scholar to stand under his flapping banner, and Santi to snap the seals on the document and unroll it.
He said nothing. An alarming lot of nothing. He read it completely through and then let it snap shut. Rafa waited, and when Santi didn't speak, he crossed his arms. "You surprise me. I've rarely seen you silent."
"You don't know what it says, do you?" Santi turned and held the document out to Khalila. "I'm sorry. I truly am."
It was the gentleness in the way he said it that made Jess go still, and he watched as Khalila unrolled the document and read. She made it only halfway, he thought, before she seemed to lose her balance, and immediately Dario moved forward, his shoulder a solid wall for her back to lean against and to keep her on her feet. She didn't make a sound as she let the scroll snap shut again.
"I told you--I'm to accept your surrender, and you're to return with me to the New York Serapeum and then be Translated to Alexandria." Rafa still seemed unbearably smug. "I'm told what the Archivist wrote will explain the uselessness of your continued defiance."
Nothing for Morgan, Jess, or Wolfe. Jess scrambled to understand what was going on here. Something big enough to rock Khalila on her heels.
But she was back on balance again now, and when she spoke, her voice was tight with suppressed fury. "A question, for my friends," she said. "Who else has family in Library service now?"
"Now?" Dario asked. "I've had dozens, but none at the moment."
"Same," said Thomas.
Glain nodded. "First and only in this generation."
"I had one," Santi said. "A brother. He's retired."
"No wonder he only meant this for me, then," Khalila said. She flung the scroll into her cousin's chest. "Death sentences," she said. "For our family! That is a sentence of death for my father, my brother, and your own father! All of them loyal to the Library without question, their entire lives. All arrested! He didn't even bother to tell you!"
Rafa froze, then unrolled the scroll and scanned it enough to know that she wasn't lying. "But--"
"They've already been arrested. They're in prison, under sentence of treason," she said. "Your name would have been here, too, only he must not have such respect for you. Instead, he uses you as his errand boy."
"I--" Rafa stared at her for a few seconds, then licked his lips as though they had gone suddenly very dry. He let the scroll drop again. "I didn't know. I swear it."
"Then now you know why we're fighting," Santi said. "Rafa. Come toward us."
"Why?"
"Just try."
Rafa frowned, but he took a step out into the open space.
Next to him, the automaton lion gave a little shake, as if it was waking up. They all stopped and looked toward it, but it subsided without more movement. But Jess could feel it watching. Waiting. What was it here to do? Rafa must have thought it was simply for his protection. Jess knew better. This is wrong, he thought.
Khalila slowly drew the sword that she'd belted on at her side before they'd left. "Rafa," she said. "Pick up the scroll. It might believe that you're presenting it to me again. I don't think it can understand what we're saying."
"It's just an escort," Rafa said. "It won't attack me."
"You're wrong," Santi said. "Listen to her. She's trying to save you."
"From what?"
"From your own stupidity," Khalila said. "Rafa, do what I ask! Now, for the love of Allah, I beg you, while you still have a chance--"
Rafa didn't move. He stayed under the fluttering, fragile protection of his banner, next to the lion, and stared at her with a grim frown. "I'm going nowhere with you. I'm loyal to the Library! The Archivist understands that I'm his servant, that I am trustworthy, and my loyalty will save our family from what you have done--"
He broke off suddenly, because the automaton lion rose from its comfortable sitting position. Standing, its head was level with Rafa's chest. It was massive and beautiful and terrifying, and it turned toward the Scholar and bared sharp metallic fangs.
He backed away, suddenly realizing that he was not in control of this situation. That he never had been.
That was the moment when, in utter silence, another lion eased up to a standing position from the grass directly behind him. Not bronze, this one. A dull matte pattern that blended perfectly with the grass, like High Garda camouflage.
