And suddenly, the burning in his chest turned to ice. He’d done it. It was agonizing, playing to this man’s vanity, drawing him into a discussion that dismissed people he loved to death and torment . . . but now, with the casual admission that murder was acceptable, the Archivist had shown his flank, and he was vulnerable. A fish on the line, Jess thought. Don’t let him wriggle off.
He nodded casually and tapped his fingers on his thigh. “I’ll convey all this to my father. He’ll want terms for the ones you want.”
“You may use my personal Codex, if you’d prefer. It is not monitored.”
Brendan’s grin hurt his lips this time, but he deployed it anyway. “I’m not a fool,” Jess said. “I’ll manage my own affairs. If we deliver Santi, Khalila Seif, Thomas Schreiber, return Dario to his relatives, and dispose of Wathen, what do you offer in return for all that?”
“Besides the two hundred thousand rare volumes you’ve already demanded? You go too far, young man.”
“I am my father’s son, after all. A fair offer buys you what you want. It’s simple commerce.”
“I am not in commerce.” The Archivist managed to make it sound like a mouthful of filth, but after a hesitation, he donned a pair of thin spectacles and opened a book on his desk. He appeared to scan its contents, though Jess doubted he had to check; a man in his position would know precisely what he had to offer, and what its value would be.
A moment later, the Archivist clapped the book shut and said, “I’ve wasted enough time on these fools and rebels. Two hundred thousand rare original books from the Archives, plus a full High Garda company’s shipment of weapons sent for the use of your father, including Greek fire. And the High Garda turns a blind eye to anything the Brightwell clan does from this point forward, so long as it doesn’t involve outright threat to the Library. Does that suffice?”
Despite everything, Jess found himself unable to reply for a long few seconds. The Archivist Magister is selling weapons and Greek fire as if it’s nothing. And guaranteeing protection to black market smugglers. The betrayal of the Library’s principles ran so deep, offended Jess’s soul so much, that for a difficult few breaths he couldn’t master his distaste.
He rose again, slowly this time, and nodded tersely. “I’ll tell my father,” he said. “I expect an answer within the day. Where should I wait?”
The Archivist had already moved on and was taking another book from the stack on the corner of his desk, and a pen. He made swift notes without looking up. “My assistant will take you to more comfortable accommodations,” he said. “For now, you are my guest. A guest with no privileges, and no freedom, you understand. I hold you hostage for your father’s good behavior. And make no mistake, if I see any signs of betrayal, I will kill you.”
Jess bowed slightly. A touch mockingly, as his brother would have. “Of course.”
CHAPTER TWO
He didn’t allow himself to relax until the assistant—what in God’s name was she called?—led him from the office and into the anteroom decorated with ancient friezes from Babylon, where her own desk sat. Less well polished, that wood, and stacked with work. She wore a gold band of service, and, yes, she was lovely; he could certainly see why Brendan had been so taken with her. Graceful as she motioned him to a seat and opened a book on her desk—one that no doubt contained orders from the Archivist that he’d just written out.
He studied her while she wasn’t looking. The rich skin tone told him she was of Egyptian heritage, mixed with something else he couldn’t define; he remembered the thick braid she wore down her back, and the cheekbones and pointed chin. I need to remember her name. N something. Naomi? Nallana?
It came to him with sudden clarity, and he used it. “Neksa, about the way I left—” This was a bridge he needed to test. Carefully.
“You left exactly the way you intended,” she said in a brisk voice very different from the warm one that Jess remembered from their first encounter, the night he’d realized his brother had taken a lover from the Library’s staff. “Without any warning and without a word.” She looked up, and those sharp eyes seemed to cut right through him. “Though I thank you, at least, for a decent note to tell me you regretted it. I wish I could say it lessened the sting.”
Brendan had written a letter? An apology? Clearly, his brother felt more for this girl than had been obvious. “Sorry,” Jess muttered. He wanted to say something else, but it was risky, and the further he pushed Neksa away, the better for both of them. “Had to be done.”
“I suppose,” she agreed. She opened a drawer in her desk and removed something that she extended to him. It was a wooden box, carved with the symbol of the Great Library on the top, and when he opened it, he found a copper bracelet sitting on a bed of soft red velvet.
He shoved it back at her. “I’m not joining your cult.”
“And we wouldn’t have you,” she said. “If you don’t agree to put it on, your accommodations will be the sort that are far less pleasant. Did you imagine you’d be granted the same freedom this time?” That, Jess felt, was a double cut. Probably well deserved, that rejection.
Jess gave her a look he well remembered from Brendan’s childhood—petulant, with a bit of aggression—and plucked the bracelet from the velvet. He slid it onto his wrist and winced when the alchemy embedded in the metal closed the bracelet and shrank it to fit close to his skin. He’d need an Obscurist, or the alchemical key that Neksa probably kept well hidden, to remove it.
“Tight,” he said. “Can’t you loosen it—”
“Of course not,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’re brave enough to chop your hand off for comfort?”
Jess was honest enough to admit that he wasn’t. At least, not without far more dire circumstances. He bowed slightly. “After you.”
He followed as she led him through the corridors of the Serapeum. It was jarring to realize that the hallway they entered was not the same he’d passed through to get here, and it preoccupied him trying to make some sense of it. He had the strange, unmistakable sense that the office was no longer where it had been when he’d been brought into it. Was that possible? Or was there some strange, confusing Obscurist field that scrambled his memory of the directions?
The thick sea air closed over him as they passed out into an unfamiliar courtyard, and he felt that strong sense of home again. This place had quickly become something special to him. He’d made his first real friends here. He’d found purpose.
And now this was a hostile environment, full of traps. He needed to remember that.
Neksa took him through the gardens that surrounded the base of the huge pyramid, and Jess looked up at the sun-gilded marble facing of it, the fire of gold at its top. They were on the public side of the pyramid now, where a steady stream of people entered the vast reading and study rooms. On the other side, the side he’d entered before, were the Scholar Steps. Thomas Schreiber’s name had been carved there, and Khalila Seif’s, and Dario Santiago’s . . . if they hadn’t been chipped into oblivion yet. Likely. Jess imagined that would have been first on the Archivist’s list, to erase them from Library history.