“Standing orders from two Archivists back,” Santi answered. “The American colonies have always been a powder keg of dissent. Burning Philadelphia could set the whole continent ablaze. Containment is the policy, with occasional bombardments.”
“And I assume you had run-ins with smugglers.”
“Of course. We caught hundreds of amateurs. Most were fanatics caught trying to fling supplies over the walls.”
“Any of them ever use one of your ballistae?” Jess asked.
“What?”
“To throw supplies. I would have. Could get a lot over in a couple of quick tosses.”
“Thank God you were not advising them.” Santi sounded amused at that one. “Jess—I’m all for using your family’s reputation, but don’t push Beck too far. He might kill you just to make the point that he doesn’t need your father’s goodwill. He has an ego.”
“You sound as if you know him,” Jess said.
“I should—we study him. He’s survived here, head of a desperate group trapped like rats, and he’s kept order by being equal parts clever and ruthless. His math is very cold: he doesn’t keep anyone alive, wasting resources, who doesn’t gain him something.”
Khalila said, “Scholar Wolfe, Dario and I can interpret the books we brought from the Black Archives; I know Master Beck was quite excited about those. Most of the books are in dead and obscure languages I doubt anyone else in Philadelphia can decipher. That might give us some protection, at least for a time.”
“That still leaves Glain and Santi,” Wolfe said. “And I’m not giving them up.”
Glain groaned sleepily and said, “Would you all just shut up and let me rest? We’re High Garda. We’ll survive. Chatter when the sun’s up, you wretches.”
“Do you want us to sing to you?” Dario asked.
“I swear to my gods and yours, Dario. Shut. Up.”
After that, it went quiet again. Some of them, Jess sensed, did go back to sleep. Not him. Not Thomas. Jess went back to a fingertip search of the cell, mind as white as a snowfield. His father had taught him how to look for hidden panels and triggers doing this, but the same principle served for anything you were looking to discover. It just took patience and focus.
From time to time, he glanced up at Thomas. The other young man hadn’t closed his eyes. He looked . . . dead. But Jess had no doubt that the mind inside that skull was whirring at top speed.
Jess finally paused his search. He’d covered most of the cell, and his back was on fire, his fingertips raw from scraping them over stone. He sat down on the floor to lean against his friend’s cot. “You all right?” He whispered it softly enough that it wouldn’t wake Thomas if he were asleep.
But he wasn’t at all surprised to get a reply.
“To be truthful, I’m glad you’re here, Jess.” He didn’t say the rest, but Jess could guess. Being trapped in a cell again, even surrounded by friends, wasn’t good for him. Thomas had endured torment in that dark hell underneath Rome; he’d survived unimaginable things, and it had taken a toll. Jess wanted to ask, but he knew better; there was a gulf between what they could say and what they would say. Best to keep things simple. Thomas was fragile, raw inside and out, and the ugly truth of it was they needed him strong if they were going to survive Philadelphia.
Thomas said, “Would you stay there while I sleep a little?”
Jess looked over his shoulder and saw that Thomas’s gaze had shifted to him. Neither of them looked away, and Jess finally said, “I’ll stand watch.”
It was, he thought, exactly what Thomas needed, and with a sigh, the big German closed his eyes and let himself finally drift away.
Jess fell asleep, too, despite the hard stones under his behind, and the chill. He dreamed he was a guard at a gate, and the gate was on fire, and he knew, he knew, that what waited beyond it was something terrible and monstrous and impossible to defeat. But that he’d have to fight it anyway. The hopelessness of it overwhelmed him.
He woke with a start when he heard voices, the dream still vivid and vibrating in his muscles. The sun was well up, and the sky a cloudy teal blue beyond the window bars. No one had arrived to wake them, Jess realized, and there was nothing to eat. His stomach was growling. He also had an urgent need for the toilet. Bucket. Well, he’d made do with worse, and he rose and made use of the thing.
“Wathen, what in Heron’s name are you doing?” That was Wolfe’s sharp, annoyed voice, and Jess buttoned up and angled a look over at the cell Glain shared with Khalila. Glain was, bafflingly enough, doing a handstand in the middle of her cell. Perfect balance, as steady as a rock. “Practicing to become Philadelphia’s court jester?”
Glain put her legs down in a smooth, perfectly coordinated move that Jess could in no way have duplicated, stood up straight, and stretched. “It feels good,” she said. “Blood to the brain. Helps me think.”
“Did you see anything useful from that position?” Dario asked.
“Did you, from lying on your oh-so-uncomfortable mattress, lazybones?”
The young man shrugged, which was a feat considering he was casually leaning a shoulder against the bars and had his arms crossed. “What do you want me to say? It’s a cell. There’s nothing in here.”
“Dario, you’re hopeless,” Wolfe said. “Jess. Tell him how he’s wrong.”
“Strip the netting under the mattresses. Braid it together, tie it to the window bars, and twist. The torque will unseat at least one of the bars pretty easily. You can use it for a tool, sharpen it up as a weapon . . .”
“The mattresses are flammable enough to make a decent amount of smoke,” Morgan added. “We’d need to be careful to keep it to a distraction. The air circulation isn’t very good. Easy to breathe in too much if it gets thick.”
Khalila held up her head scarf and unfolded it with a snap of her hand. “If I weight the two ends with pieces of stone, this makes a perfectly good weapon.”
Dario said, “Fine. You’re all much better at dirty fighting and jail survival than I am. But as the Scholar so wisely said, we need to think three moves ahead. Let’s assume that we’re out of the cells, we’ve saved our lives from the Burners, we’ve found a way out of the city. What then? I think we need a way to communicate with whatever allies we have left out there. I don’t suppose you’ve got that answer tucked up your sleeve.”
Jess said, “If they’re getting supplies, they must have a smuggling tunnel.”
“Explain,” Wolfe said sharply. “Because I’m not allowing you to run blindly out into unknown territory. We must—”