“Unlike me,” Santi said. “I’m not averse to spilling some.”
“Nic.”
“Jess is right. We need to keep an eye on Thomas.”
“We wait,” Wolfe said again. “I’ve waited in worse places.”
He had. Wolfe had suffered everything Thomas had in Library prisons . . . and for far longer. If anyone had things to fear, it was Christopher Wolfe, who was, at the best of times, bitterly fragile. It took some familiarity to see it; he was masterful at putting on a front. But everyone had a breaking point. Wolfe had passed his, shattered, and somehow painfully patchworked himself back together.
“We wait,” Wolfe said. It sounded firm enough, but there was a hollow sound to his voice. “Until we know more. That’s all we can do.”
The wait passed in grueling silence, but Wolfe was right. In a little over three hours, which Jess torturously calculated by the movement of the shadow of the bars on the cell floor, the men were back unlocking Jess’s cell door. “You,” the ugly one said. “Come on. You’re wanted.”
“Seen the reward posters, have you?” he said, and managed a cocky grin, mostly for Morgan’s benefit, because she was watching him with a worried frown. “Back soon,” he told her, and she nodded.
“In bocca al lupo,” she murmured, and the others repeated it, like a prayer. That nearly knocked the grin off him. Nearly.
“Crepi il lupo,” he said. “Morgan. If I don’t come back—”
“Walk,” his guard said, and planted a hand in the center of his back to shove him onward. He stumbled, twisted his knee, and fell hard with his hands grasping the bars of Morgan’s cell. “Oh, for the love of God—get up, you clumsy fool!”
Jess hadn’t had a chance to throw a signal, but that didn’t matter. Morgan’s quick fingers retrieved the lockpicks he’d been holding out stuck between two knuckles, and her touch skimmed light as breath over his skin. That almost stole his breath, and he looked up into her face.
Into a quick, broken smile.
He’d wanted her to have them, in case he didn’t come back, and she understood that without a word being said. He wanted to say a great deal more to her and was parting his lips to try when he was yanked upright again, and his head slammed hard into unyielding iron to teach him better balance. It didn’t have that effect. His knees went weak, and he nearly fell again, this time not on purpose. While he was down, they added manacles to his wrists.
“Hey, scrubber.” He looked up at the sound of Dario Santiago’s voice and saw the Spaniard staring at him through the bars of the next cell. Dario didn’t look like the pampered, arrogant dandy anymore; he looked like a pirate, with an evil gleam in those dark eyes. “Don’t embarrass us. Come back alive. Fetch Thomas while you’re at it, eh?” He transferred the look to the guard dragging on Jess’s wrists. “You, Burner, feel free to not come back at all. I see you again, friend . . .” He made a lazy little throat-cutting gesture.
“Lovely,” Wolfe said sourly from the far end of the hall. “Leave it to you to make new friends, Santiago.” He raised his voice a little. “Brightwell. He’s right. Bring yourselves back safe.”
Dear God. Wolfe is worried about us? We are in real trouble.
A hand shoved hard between his shoulder blades pushed Jess on, and the outer door gaped wide on a square of sunlight so bright it seemed like running face-first into a solid object. It dazed for a few seconds, then comforted as the guards locked up the door behind him and marched him away.
Pay attention, he told himself, and blinked his prison-adapted eyes back into focus. The building, which so far was devoted solely to their care, was a long, low, unprepossessing block set to one side of a wide public square full of grass and spreading trees that had the shimmering early colors of fall. The arena where they’d been forced to watch books burn lay on his right, and directly in front, on the other side of the park, rose a four-story building of gray stone and French blue accents, all gingerbreaded with thin windows and arches like raised eyebrows. A single tall tower rose at the back of it, topped with a statue: Benjamin Franklin, who’d been a Scholar in the Library, and then left it for the Burners later in life. Patron saint of the city, so they said. They’d destroyed the old statue of William Penn to elevate their own hero.
Saint Franklin was doing a crap job of it. The town—village, really—of Philadelphia was half in ruins. The city hall in front of Jess was the only building of any size; the rest of the place was cottages and shops that looked cobbled together, and rightly so, because the Library’s ballista bombs regularly shattered entire blocks, and with the city starved for resources by the permanent encampments around it, new building materials must have been hard to come by. So the remaining buildings were made of a dangerous hodgepodge of scrap metal, mismatched brick and stone, and patched lumber that managed to have a style all its own. I might not like them, but they’re survivors, Jess had to admit. A hundred years they’d held out, against forces that had made short work of taking over entire countries.
Philadelphia was the defiant, rebellious example the Burners held up to the world. But Jess had a strong suspicion that it was less the Burners’ valiant efforts than the Library’s own agenda that kept the place alive. The decision had been made long ago to contain them inside their walls and wait them out. The Archivist had many other considerations, and destroying this place must have been lowest on his list.
The citizens of the town were as individual as the buildings, and their clothing as patchworked, heavily used, and durable. He saw tribal people walking the streets, shoulder to shoulder with fellows of European, African, and Asian descent. Odd, how varied the makeup of the place was, and how well they all seemed to get along. Common enemies, he supposed. And for Burners, this place had to be as much a draw as Alexandria was for would-be Scholars. He’d fully expected Alexandria to be a richly varied city. Somehow, he hadn’t expected the same of the Burners.
The air smelled faintly of ashes coming from the stadium, with the whip of chill on a breeze that rattled leaves. I wonder what they do for heating, Jess thought. Winters must be brutal. Philadelphia survived on raw pride.
Raw pride and smugglers. The place had to survive on smugglers bringing in food, fuel, weapons, materials. Slipping past the High Garda would be difficult, but difficult was meat and drink to people like his clan, who’d been thumbing their noses at the Library for longer than the family tree had been kept. And the Brightwells had cousins everywhere—by kind, if not by kin. Someone who smuggled into Philadelphia would have at least a passing amount of loyalty to his family. Had to have.
The question would be who to trust, and how far. Right now, Jess didn’t trust anyone except his own friends and fellows.
“Where are we going?” he asked the guard, though he was fairly sure he already knew. “Is Thomas all right?”