CHAPTER TWO
In the morning, well before sunrise, Jess woke and started a systematic inventory of the cell, down to the stones, mortar, and bars.
Thomas overflowed his narrow bunk, hands folded on his chest, and his breathing seemed even and calm, but in the dim light seeping through the high window, Jess saw he wasn’t asleep. Thomas’s blue eyes were open, staring at the ceiling—but not a blank stare. His mind was all too active.
“What are you thinking?” Jess asked quietly as he stood on his bunk and pulled at the iron bars on the cell window. He kept it to a neutral question, because it was likely that the other young man’s thoughts were on the past. These cells were cleaner than the Library’s, and thus far refreshingly free of torture devices, but the similarities still chilled. He couldn’t imagine what being imprisoned dredged up for Thomas, who’d endured months in that hell.
Thomas let two slow breaths pass in and out before he said, “I imagine they’ll try to take Morgan first.”
That was far from what he’d been expecting, and Jess swung down to the floor with an almost noiseless hop. “Why do you say that?”
“The Burners may hate the Library, but they’re not stupid—at least, not this nest of them. They’ve resisted for more than a hundred years, and turned the American colonies into boiling pots of trouble on all fronts for the Library. Beck will fully understand the advantages of having a pet Obscurist. She could help them in their terrorist operations, repair their Translation Chamber, create their own Codex . . . They could build their own splinter version of the Great Library here in Philadelphia, but under their own control. They have original books, I imagine. What they need is an Obscurist. The rest of us . . .” Thomas shrugged. “We’re only a bonus.”
A new voice said, “We must use skills to our advantage.” That was Khalila, who perched on the edge of her cot near her cell’s door. “Our knowledge is our value. We have to make them see that.”
“Did you not hear the part where they’re likely to take Morgan by force?”
“Morgan is right here, and quite tired of being talked about as if she’s some delicate treasure,” Morgan said. “I’m in the least danger of all of you; Thomas just eloquently pointed that out.”
“Is nobody asleep?” Jess asked in exasperation.
It drew a dry laugh from Dario’s cell, though the Spaniard didn’t bother to rise at all. “Have you tried finding a comfortable position on these devil’s excuses for beds? Khalila’s right. Work with the Burners, or escape. Those are our choices.”
“There is no working with them,” Scholar Wolfe said. Jess couldn’t see him; he was on the other side of the stone wall to Jess’s left. “There is appearing to work with them, and that is a means to a greater end than just survival. We need to have a goal of escaping not the cells, not the building, but the city. Even after, we must have a plan for what comes next. Make no move without knowing at least three ahead.”
“I have a plan. Build my mechanical printer,” Thomas said. “Use it to break the Library’s hold on knowledge. That is a good plan.”
“That isn’t a plan, my poor engineer. That is a goal,” Dario said. “A plan is steps we take to achieve the goal. You know, the boring part of being clever.”
“I know how to build my part,” Thomas replied. “Which is more than I can say of you, Dario.”
“Gentlemen, didn’t we agree we are family?” Khalila said.
“I argue with my family,” Dario said. “But yes, desert flower. I will do better.”
“Agreed,” Thomas said. “I apologize. I’m sure Dario has some skill I’m not aware of.”
Khalila almost laughed. “Then let’s proceed. Beck isn’t stupid, or overly fanatical, or he wouldn’t have survived as their leader this long. So . . .”
“So we offer him something he won’t find in the books he confiscated from us,” Jess said. “As Thomas said. The press.”
Dario made a rude noise. “Stupid idea. Once he has the plans, he has no need of us.”
“You forget, he’s got no need of us now,” Wolfe said. His tone was as heavy and sharp as a guillotine blade. “The only one of us he actually needs is Morgan. The rest of us are—as Thomas so correctly put it—bonuses. He has to want us alive.”
Thomas still hadn’t moved from his deathlike stillness on the bunk. His gaze hadn’t varied from the shadowed ceiling. “Then I don’t give him the plans. I build the press first and prove to him it works,” he said. “And Jess builds it with me. Along with Morgan, that gives us three Beck can’t kill, and it buys us time.”
“He’ll accept that for you. Jess is just another pair of hands.”
“I hate to say it, but Beck does need me,” Jess said. “Not for my brilliant mind so much as his own survival. Have you looked around this so-called town? It isn’t staying alive on its own merits; the buildings are half ruins, the people all but starved.”
“A hundred years of unrelenting siege will do that,” Santi said.
“And they don’t survive on whatever meager crops they raise in here. At least, not completely.”
Santi’s voice turned contemplative. “I see your point. This town survives on smugglers getting them extra food and supplies.”
“Exactly. And those smugglers will have ties that lead back to my family, one way or another. I’m more valuable for what I represent, once Beck knows who I am. I’m worth better terms and more supplies. Or the reverse, because if he kills me, he loses his flow of supplies.”
“Nice for you,” Dario said. “That last bit is particularly good. I mean, better chance of us escaping in the chaos, of course, if you want to volunteer as sacrificial goat.”
Jess replied silently. With a gesture.
“Getting beyond these walls will be a much greater challenge,” said Santi. “The walls have been standing for a hundred years—treated by an Obscurist, most likely, to withstand Greek fire and other, more conventional bombardment. Plus, there are no fewer than four full High Garda companies stationed around the walls of Philadelphia, and they’re constantly on watch. My own company—” His voice broke a bit, as if he’d only just remembered that they’d abandoned everything to save Thomas, including his position as a High Garda captain, and so, his soldiers. “My own company spent a year here some time ago.”
“About that,” Dario said. “I’d have thought the impressive armed High Garda could defeat a few hundred Burners inside a half-ruined city in less than a week, never mind a hundred years.”