‘I didn’t take it,’ Jess said, and held out his hand. Dario stared at him for a second, then took the offer and let Jess haul him back to his feet. ‘I’d do a lot of things. Thought of sending your entire wardrobe to Barcelona, in fact, and making you beg for it back. But I didn’t do that, and I didn’t take your Codex.’
‘Unfortunately, I believe you,’ Dario said. ‘But admit it, you were the most likely suspect.’
‘I’m flattered. Where did you leave it?’
‘Are you going to be my mother now, and tell me to look in the last place I saw it? Vete al diablo! It was here. On my desk. And now it is not.’
Jess went to the door. It swung easily open. ‘I locked the door. Someone opened it.’
‘I … might have done that when I came in.’
‘Left it unlocked?’
Dario shrugged. ‘Maybe … also not closed. There was wine involved. But I didn’t lose my Codex. I’ve never been that drunk.’
‘Just buy a new one. You’re not poor.’
‘My father gave it to me,’ Dario said. He looked away. ‘When I was ten. It was the last gift I had from him. I want it back.’
Jess pulled in a breath and let it out.
‘All right. Let’s look,’ he said. ‘In case you really were that drunk.’
He was checking the tangled bedding when Dario, over by the desk, said, ‘I think I know what happened.’ His voice sounded odd. As Jess came towards him, Dario handed him a piece of paper with a handwritten note.
You shove your money and nobility and privilege down our throats, and expect us to smile and thank you. We’ve had enough of you. Take the next train home, and we’ll return your Codex. Stay, and you’ll never see it again.
No signature.
‘It’s not from you,’ Dario said. ‘You’d tell me to my face.’ He sank into the desk chair, staring out at the thick orange dawn smudging the eastern horizon.
‘Who else have you tried to bully out of here?’
Dario’s shrug said it all. ‘Everyone, at one time or another. I earned this, didn’t I?’
‘You did.’ No reason to lie about it. ‘What are you going to do, then? Give in and leave?’
Dario sat silently for a moment, then took in an audible breath and said, ‘It’s just a Codex. I’ll get another, as you said.’ But there was something broken in his gaze. ‘Leave me alone, scrubber.’ He pulled out his personal journal and pen. Jess understood the impulse, all too well, to spill out the bile and hurt into ink, where no one could see it.
He didn’t waste the opportunity to be the first into the bathroom.
EPHEMERA
Text of a note sent via Codex to Jess Brightwell from his mother, Charity Brightwell:
My dearest boy:
I pray this message finds you well and happy in your exciting new life. Your father and I miss you awfully each day, as does your brother, who likewise sends his best wishes. Business is going well, he says, and he hopes that one day you will be able to participate in it in a more meaningful way.
Your father received an appointment to a select committee on the beautification of our borough. As a consequence, Lord Peter Foxworth had us to dinner the other night to discuss hedges. It was a lovely event, and I know you would have greatly enjoyed meeting his daughter Juliet, who is quite lovely. Your uncle Thaddeus has retired and moved to his country home in the north, and has made it known that we are always welcome there. He fears that London may fall victim to the Welsh advance, but we don’t believe that could ever happen, of course. Surely the army will stop them.
I am eager to hear all of the news of your brilliant success, Jess. Please do write, and know that I send my love.
Fondly,
Your mother
A separate note from Callum Brightwell, attached to the same message. Suspected of hidden coded messaging and reviewed by Obscurists. Found to be inconclusive.
Greetings from your old da, boy. Always remember the words of Descartes: The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries. Take full advantage of your opportunities at the Great Library, and do your family proud. All your siblings, living and dead, count upon you to prove your worth to the world. And don’t forget your cousins. They’re eager to see you again.
CHAPTER THREE
When Jess got the letter from home, he knew his father was finally calling in the debt. Mother’s letter was mere camouflage, but his father’s scribble … that was different.
Father had mentioned Descartes in his note. It was an urgent code, quoting Descartes, who was his father’s least favourite philosopher. Jess, as he read the message, felt his pulse quicken. All your siblings … Brendan and Liam, but Jess knew there had been a third child born after Liam and before him and his brother. Stillborn. So that made three siblings. Descartes’ third work was on the subject of optics and refraction, which meant his father was telling him to look … but look for what?
Worth to the world. An odd turn of phrase for his father, and Jess read it several times before the meaning sank in. It was a quotation, hiding in plain sight. He couldn’t quite place the work in question by memory, and he didn’t dare an obvious request to the Library to track it down.
His father wanted him to obtain the book where that quotation was to be found, and deliver it to his cousins … names his father had made him memorise before he’d boarded the train for Alexandria. Distant relations, some of them, but just as often trusted colleagues in the trade.
In that one message, his father had ordered him to search for a particular book, and to deliver it to contacts in the Alexandrian smuggling trade … and by using a quotation by Descartes, he’d indicated how urgent the acquisition was.
Very.
His first real job, on behalf of the Brightwells.
Jess had expected to feel exhilarated in that moment, useful at last, but instead, he felt … used. Nothing different about that, he told himself. He’d been used by his family since the day he’d been old enough to run. You don’t have to do it, some little part of him whispered. He can’t punish you now. He’s got too much invested. What if he was caught? Not only would he be dismissed, but this time, he wasn’t just an anonymous cutter in the streets of London. He’d be known. Identified.
Turning down his father had just as many risks.
‘Everything all right?’
Jess flinched and almost fumbled his Codex, because Thomas was right at his shoulder, and Jess hadn’t sensed his approach. Too stealthy by far, for such a solid young man. Jess shut the book. ‘Family business,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’
Thomas sat down across from him, on an old divan that wasn’t meant to hold someone of his size; it creaked alarmingly, and the ornamental legs bowed, but he didn’t seem to notice. Glain, who was sitting on the other end, got up to ease the load on the furniture, with a typically grim scowl at the both of them. She went to the water jug in the corner of the common room and then found another seat far away. Apart from Glain and a rowdy group playing dice in the corner, they were almost alone. It was far later than any of them should have been awake.