‘Don’t ask,’ Jess said.
‘The key must be to get up before him,’ Thomas said.
‘Thank you for spotting the obvious.’
Thomas just grinned and held the door open. He was big enough that Jess hardly had to stoop to walk under his outstretched arm.
The common room on the ground floor was already filled, and Jess felt even worse, seeing that everyone else had managed freshly washed faces and neatly arranged hair. He tried to finger-comb his into some semblance of order, but from Thomas’s mournful head shake, it wasn’t a success.
Scholar Wolfe didn’t come for them. Instead, he sent a tall man dressed in the intimidating black of the Library’s High Garda elite, with a gold band on his wrist. The weapons he kept on his belt looked well cared for, and perhaps more significantly, well used.
Thomas nudged him with an unsubtle elbow and leant close to whisper, ‘He is a Library soldier!’
‘I know that,’ Jess whispered back. ‘What’s he doing here?’
Thomas shrugged. ‘Perhaps frightening us?’
Accurate observation, because the man swept them with an indifferent, middle-distance stare that was more intimidating than a glare. He took a swift count and said just two words: ‘With me.’ Then walked down the hall, leaving them all to scramble along in his wake.
Outside, there were no waiting carriages, and the High Garda soldier led them down the boulevard at a quick-march pace. The sun was just rising, but it was already unreasonably hot and damp, and clothing that had seemed comfortable in London quickly felt smothering in Alexandria. Jess thought that it was an advantage to have skipped the shower, in all, because while he was sweating through his clothes, so were the others, even Dario, and by the time they finally came to a halt in front of a nondescript low building, Jess seemed no worse off than his fellows.
They’d walked all the way to the harbour, Jess realised; he could see the steamships bobbing beyond the low roofs, and the large passenger ships moving in to the docks, ready to disembark their travellers. He longed to see all that; he’d always loved being on the docks in London, with all the noise and activity. The half-reeking, half-fresh smell of the sea seemed like home.
But instead, their guide led them to a silent, darkened building with a single entrance. No windows. Going inside it felt like walking into a tomb … and the floor slanted down.
‘Where are we?’ he asked Thomas, but the bigger young man just shook his head. The ceiling was low enough that Thomas had to stoop. The walls were plain, but they seemed to have dirty smudges on them, and the whole place reeked of an acrid, chemical smell. Not that he had time to ponder it, because their High Garda guide was still walking at a brisk, martial pace.
Then, suddenly, they emerged into a much wider, taller room. Jess took three steps inside and stopped, craning his head upward to admire the vaulting height of it. Someone shoved him from behind, and he moved out of the way to a spot on the side of the room. It was rounded, and like the hallway, bare of decoration. Their small group of thirty didn’t take up much room in the relatively vast space.
The room seemed very sparse. Impressive, but empty; the walls had the same dark smudges, and the air still carried that sharp, chemical tang. It reminded Jess of something, but he couldn’t think what.
In silence, they waited. Their High Garda guide had disappeared, leaving the rest of them staring at each other. Jess had met most of the postulants, though the names escaped his tired brain at present; he most vividly knew Dario, of course, and Thomas. He spotted Khalila standing off on her own, looking fresh and calm in her headdress and loose robes, while the Welsh girl Glain towered over the other females by several inches.
None of them spoke. A few shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other in discomfort from the long walk, but by common consent, they understood this was not a place for conversation.
And then Wolfe emerged from the single entrance, and walked into the centre of the room. He looked just as he had at the train station: dark, dangerous, and impatient. He took a moment to look around the room at each of them, and then said, ‘Here begins your first lesson. You stand in the first daughter library of Alexandria, the first Serapeum. In this room, copies of works from the stores of the Great Library were first made available to anyone who cared to come and read them … even women, though that was not common practice at the time. Alexandria was the first place in the world to encourage common people to read and learn. The first to educate without regard to status, creed, sex or religion. You stand in the birthplace of our history.’
He let that sit for a moment, and in truth, Jess could feel the weight of it bearing down on him. The walls had been renovated, obviously, but the floor had not. It was ancient stone, worn smooth by millions of steps taken across it. Aristotle might have walked here, he thought. Might have scratched out that first copy of On Sphere Making, sitting at a table right over there.
It gave him a chill, as if he was surrounded by ghosts.
‘The reason I am here as your proctor is to teach you who we are. What we do. And we begin here in this place where the Great Library took the first steps towards what it has become.’ He paused, studying them. ‘Do you understand what the job of a librarian is?’
It seemed like a stupid question, and hands shot up. Wolfe sighed. ‘You are not children,’ he said, ‘and I will not favour the shy. Speak out if you have an answer.’
A riot of voices. Wolfe scanned the crowd and pointed a finger. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Step forward, give your name, speak your mind.’
A pretty young girl with glossy red hair and a confident smile moved forward with perfect grace. ‘Anna Brygstrom, sir, from Denmark. Librarians run the daughter libraries, the Serapeum.’
‘Postulant Brygstrom, I did not ask for your nationality. You have no homeland here, because once you enter Library service, it is your nation. We are your countrymen.’ He paused, and there was a cruel glitter in his eyes. ‘If you’ve come all the way here to learn the mundane details of how to create a work schedule and properly fill a patron’s request, then you are in the wrong place. A properly trained marmoset could run a daughter library, since it is merely a mirror of what is concentrated here, in Alexandria. Step back.’
She no longer had a smile, confident or otherwise, as she disappeared back into the circle.
Someone else stepped forward to take her place, and Jess recognised in the next second that it was the Arab girl, Khalila.
‘Postulant Khalila Seif, sir. We are not here to learn how to run a daughter library. We are here to learn how the Great Library itself runs.’
Wolfe stared at her for a long few seconds, then nodded sharply. ‘Correct. Step back, Postulant Seif. On the highest possible level, the Library exists because each nation of the world benefits from it, and because the Library favours none, relies on none. It took time to free ourselves from the tyranny of politics, kings and priests; it took time to assemble the wealth and the force to defend what we have. But most of all, it took a miracle. And what was that miracle?’
Jess took a chance and stepped forward. ‘Jess – Postulant Jess Brightwell, sir. The discovery of mirroring.’ He kept it short and to the point; it was Scholar Wolfe’s job to lecture, and if he tried, he could tell it would only lead to a bloody scar on him. At Wolfe’s precise nod, he moved back again.