‘My family messages don’t make me so grim in the face,’ Thomas said. ‘Is it bad news?’
Jess shrugged and forced a smile. ‘It’s always bad in my family. Can you think of a book that has the phrase in it worth to the world?’
‘No, why?’
In truth, Jess couldn’t; he didn’t dare. He shrugged. ‘Not important. I just heard it somewhere, and it sounded familiar.’
‘It’s from one of the Lost Books,’ Glain said, which was unexpected; he didn’t think she was even listening. ‘A play by Aristophanes burnt in the sack of Rayy. I thought you were supposed to be the expert, Brightwell.’
‘Not tonight, apparently,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ He was genuinely grateful. His father wanted him to find a lost book by Aristophanes, urgently, and deliver it to the shadow market contacts. A book that was somewhere in Alexandria.
Somewhere in Alexandria wasn’t a reasonable area to search.
Jess yawned, stretched, and closed his Codex. Thomas, who’d put his head back against the divan’s cushions, cracked a blurry eye and said, ‘Off to bed?’
‘Yeah, dawn’s coming fast, and Wolfe has no mercy,’ Jess said. ‘Gute Nacht.’
‘Your accent is still terrible, you know.’
‘You taught me.’
Jess didn’t go to bed. He slipped up the stairs to the second floor, which was now mostly deserted, thanks to the early departure of some of their classmates. He took the route he’d scouted earlier through the back corner window of a little-used storage room. From there, it was a short drop to a ledge, then down to the alley behind Ptolemy House. Even this late, the streets were still busy, and he’d been out enough to know his way.
It took most of the night to find a shadow market ‘cousin’ who knew the book in question and who in town possessed a copy: he found it was in the collection of a man named Abdul Nejem. Nejem, he was told, wouldn’t sell it; it was the prize jewel of his treasure chest of books.
It didn’t matter, because Jess didn’t have the funds to buy it in any case. His father had only instructed him to get it.
So he stole it.
It was an easy enough job, though it was near dawn when Jess delivered the Aristophanes scroll back to his market contact … but the cousin-in-crime who’d been waiting to receive the book was gone, and someone new waited in the darkness.
That was almost never a good sign, new faces. Jess stopped and took a step back, getting ready to run.
The figure stepped into the light with a tight, guarded smile on his face. ‘Hello, brother,’ Brendan said. ‘See you haven’t lost your touch. That’s good. Thought this place might make you turn honest.’
He stepped forward and pulled Jess into a hard embrace. Hard to admit how good that felt, to see family. ‘I’m as honest as I’ll ever get,’ Jess said. ‘Which will do fine, thanks. What are you doing here?’
‘Came for that,’ Brendan said, and gestured to the ornate scroll case in Jess’s hand. ‘Aristophanes, right? Never cared for him, but I don’t care about personal taste when hard currency’s involved. Any problems getting hold of it?’
‘Brendan …’ Jess took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘What are you doing here? In Alexandria?’
‘Told you already. Were you followed?’
‘No, I’m not an amateur, and answer the bloody question!’
‘Da wanted it in the safest possible hands,’ his brother said, ‘which happen to be mine, of course. It’s a trip to the buyer, he didn’t want it entrusted to anyone else along the way. Including our cousins.’
The idea of Brendan strolling bold as brass into Alexandria and smuggling out a book made Jess feel sick to his stomach. Physically ill. ‘It’s not simple death by hanging here, brother. They’ve got a long, inventive tradition of finding ways to make people die in pain. Let the others take the risk, that’s what Da pays them for!’
‘Da’s orders were for me to do it personally,’ Brendan said. ‘I know what I’m getting into, ta for caring.’
‘I—’ I do care, Jess wanted to say, and it was true, but he knew neither one of them felt comfortable with having that said aloud. ‘If you’re caught, I’m in it, too. You know that. Same face.’
Brendan’s smile had teeth now. ‘Well, can’t have my brutal torture and death get you failed out of your class, can we? Stop worrying, brother. I’ll be fine. Best get back to your school before you’re missed.’
‘Brendan—’
‘At least you’ve learnt not to call me Scraps. Thought I’d have to beat that out of you, one day.’ The smile faded, and his brother looked like half a stranger now. Someone he loved, but someone he wasn’t sure he could ever really trust. ‘I’ll give Father your love.’
There was just enough sarcasm in it to sting, and then Brendan was gone through a hidden door at the back of the empty shop, and Jess was left alone to hope that the next time he saw his twin, Brendan wasn’t dying. Or dead.
He made it to Ptolemy House just as the bells clanged, summoning them to another day with Scholar Wolfe.
‘You look terrible,’ Thomas said, as Jess went straight for the common room, and coffee. ‘Bad night?’
That was, Jess thought, putting it mildly.
The Aristophanes book was valuable, but sending Brendan was stupid. Reckless. He wondered what his father was thinking … and then he wondered if it had really been his father’s idea at all.
‘This is impossible!’ Izumi burst out the next morning, when their Codexes all flashed and chimed in unison, and Jess opened it to find instructions from Wolfe. ‘We get so little sleep, he asks so much, and for what? Now this?’
‘What?’ Jess asked her. ‘Mine says report to the classroom. What’s yours?’
Her mouth was set in a grim straight line. ‘He wants me to report to the Medica headquarters. I’m to receive special half-day training on top of classroom study.’
Jess looked around at those in the common room. ‘Anyone else?’ About half the class raised hands, including Thomas. ‘Where are you off to, then?’
‘Artifex,’ he said. He was trying not to seem happy, but as usual with Thomas, he couldn’t conceal it. ‘I am to study the making of blueprints.’
The rest were similar; it was apparent that Wolfe had identified specific traits in them he felt needed cultivation. Khalila had special study with another Scholar versed in sophisticated mathematics and the study of the heavens. Dario seemed fairly content to be studying intensively in history. Glain, not surprisingly, ended up training with the High Garda.
Jess had nothing additional. It seemed ominous, as if Wolfe had simply given up on him. Jack of all trades, master of none, was another favourite saying of the Brightwell household. He’d always thought knowing many things gave him strength.
Now it made him feel vulnerable.
The day’s classroom training, though, was also curiously individual. They were kept waiting in the room and told to read on the internal structure of the Library hierarchy, which Jess could already recite in his sleep, and then were taken one by one to a smaller side room where Wolfe waited. When it was Jess’s turn, he felt that it was a critical moment: either he would impress Wolfe today, or he would be struck off.