Scholar Christopher Wolfe’s name was years gone already. The Library seemed permanent. But the steady, quiet editing of its own history showed its vulnerability.
He concentrated on following the sway of Neksa’s braid out of the shadows, through the lush, blooming gardens, and out to the busy street. That took them past a lounging statue of an enormous sphinx, and the automaton turned its pharaoh’s head to regard them with flickering reddish eyes. Jess’s skin prickled with a flood of adrenaline, but he kept his pace measured and tried to control his heartbeat, too. This was the beast that would be set on his trail if he violated his parole. And while he might be able to disable the thing, it could easily disembowel him with a swipe of its claws, or take to the air with its wings to crush him down. Worse still, that human-shaped mouth hid a nightmare of razor-sharp teeth. Better to never see those, or hear the shrill, eerie scream.
The bracelet he wore was both protection and threat.
Neksa stepped confidently into the wide, white-stoned street and gestured for an oncoming steam-powered carriage, which hissed to a stop next to them. Neksa gave an address and they scrambled in. They sat on opposite sides, staring at each other, as the vehicle lurched into motion, and the wonders of Alexandria began to scroll past.
Neksa finally said, “You’ll leave when your business is done here.”
It was not quite a question, but Jess treated it as one. “I will,” he said. “I owe it to my father.”
“And you owe me nothing.”
Jess looked away and fixed his gaze on the broad shape of the Lighthouse tower, where his friends had once held offices. “I owe a lot of people a lot of things,” he said, and wasn’t sure if he was speaking for himself or his brother. “No idea how I’ll be able to pay all those debts.”
She shook her head but didn’t answer otherwise, and they rode in silence, clanking past the Lighthouse and around a shallow curve that took them into different streets. Alexandria held a wide, wild variety of architecture: Greek, Roman, Egyptian, a few styles from farther afield. They passed a lush Chinese palace surrounded by carefully tended gardens, and then a manor house that could have easily passed for English.
They were, Jess realized, passing a diplomatic district. His pulse sped up as he spotted an ornate Spanish palace behind heavy iron gates, because he knew who lived behind that façade. Dario had told him that he had a cousin serving as an ambassador in Alexandria.
Dario’s family was stuffed with royals and lords and ladies. Hardly surprising they’d end up in positions of power here, too.
Jess noted the location, and the carriage took another turn into a much drabber section . . . perfectly respectable but very small homes decorated with a variety of bright colors. The carriage drew to a halt, and Neksa handed the driver a slip of paper—a promissory note from the Archivist, most likely. After they stepped out, the driver clattered her carriage onward, and Neksa led him up the worn steps to a door that swung open when she pressed her hand to it. “It’s keyed to your bracelet,” she told him. “And, of course, the lock can be overridden at any time by someone of higher rank. You will be watched, monitored, and tracked. We will search your quarters regularly.”
“I expect nothing else,” he said. The single room they stepped into had blank white walls, plain furnishings that seemed comfortable enough. A bed in a doorless alcove that could be curtained off for privacy, a long reading couch, a desk and chair. The kitchen held the rudiments necessary to cooking. There was a bathroom in yet another curtained alcove.
The windows were small and barred from the outside, and there was no other door.
“Adequate,” he said. “And how far am I allowed to go?”
“You don’t. You wait until you’re told differently. The Archivist has told me you’ll be put under lock and key in the prisons if you set foot outside this door. Do you understand?”
“What am I supposed to do for food?”
“You’ll get food brought to you. Beyond that, it’s not my concern.”
“So this is another holding cell—is that it?”
“A much better one. Count your blessings, Brendan.”
For a long second, they stared at each other. She was looking for something in him, he realized. Some spark.
He didn’t have it to give her.
Neksa looked away, took in a quick breath, and said, “If you need something else, write it to me in the Codex.”
“Books,” he said. “I’ll need books.”
“There is a shelf of Blanks next to the bed,” she told him. “We’re not cruel.” There was an accusation buried in it, and then a bit of a frown followed it as she tilted her head to study him again. “When did you become such a reader, Brendan?”
A second of inattention, and he’d slipped. Jess was a reader. Brendan was not. “Just wanted to do a bit of research for Da.”
She nodded, but that little notch of a frown remained between her eyebrows. Jess stared her down, and she finally looked away again and then left without a good-bye. The door shut behind her, and Jess sank down on the couch. Allowed himself a deep, shaking breath.
It was alarmingly easy to become his brother . . . but the little things mattered. Neksa was now on her guard, even more than she had been. If she began to doubt he was who he claimed, he’d end his days screaming in a dungeon, or worse.
He put his aching head in his hands, because that made him finally face the rest of it: Scholar Wolfe, locked in his own private hell again because bringing him here had made this charade possible. And Morgan, Morgan, back in the Iron Tower, where she’d be once more enslaved, not even her body her own.
This has to work, he told himself. He couldn’t use the Codex that had been provided to him; it was obvious that Neksa would see every pen stroke he wrote in it, watch it appear in real time in her own mirrored volume. And with the bracelet locked on his wrist, he couldn’t slip away to send messages.
They were all locked up, in their own ways. Dario, Khalila, Thomas, Glain, Captain Santi . . . all prisoners headed for Red Ibrahim’s ship, which would carry them here to Alexandria for sale to the Library. That was the bargain Jess’s father had made with his fellow master smuggler. Red Ibrahim would exact his own terms from the Archivist, in his own time.
Every one of his friends, every one, was inches from death, or prison.
How did I ever think this was going to work? Not that he’d had much richness in choices; he’d known that his father would betray them back in England, and this had been the last-ditch effort, once that happened, to keep some elements in play. Wolfe, for one; he hadn’t brought Scholar Wolfe here by chance. He’d been afraid that, of all of them, the Archivist would have ordered Wolfe killed instantly. He and Dario had agreed that delivering Wolfe gift wrapped was the only decent option of a set of very bad choices. Jess was acutely aware that it meant, at best, sentencing Wolfe back to a prison that had destroyed him before.