“Your service to the Great Library is beyond price,” Scholar Murasaki said. “As the elected Archivist, I thank you for your loyalty and vision, and I welcome you to this sacred place. Will you take your oath?”
“I will,” Santi said. “I swear to serve the Great Library with body, mind, and blood for as long as it pleases the Archivist. I swear to defend it against all enemies, within and without. I swear to uphold the laws and covenants of the Great Library, and when ordered to direct and lead the High Garda in battle. I swear to protect knowledge and its servants wherever they may be threatened.”
“Then, rise, Niccolo Santi, Lord Commander of the High Garda,” Murasaki said. “Captains of the High Garda: do you affirm this elevation?”
Each captain, Khalila realized, stood at attention beside each block of troops, and one by one, they took a step forward, put fists to their hearts, and said, “I do so affirm.” There were dozens of commanders here. The High Garda had united behind Santi.
Of course, not all the High Garda are here, she reminded herself. The deployed companies, the local Garda in the cities and towns, they’re not represented. And the High Garda Elite all broke for the old Archivist, and no doubt took some of the regular High Garda with them. How many, I wonder. Santi would know. She’d need to ask him for the figures and details on the captains who were missing. Murasaki would need that information as quickly as possible.
“Khalila?” Saleh’s whisper. She glanced at him and saw him watching Santi as he completed his ceremony and began to rise to his feet. “He is Scholar Wolfe’s lover?”
“Yes,” she said. “Though more than that. Partner for years, though I don’t believe they have formally married.”
Saleh nodded without taking his gaze from Santi. “Wolfe spoke of him,” he said. “Well . . . not to me. I suppose better to say he spoke to him when Wolfe was . . . unwell.”
“Unwell?”
“Prison was not good for the man. You should be sure he’s coping.” Saleh frowned and cast a look through the crowd. “I’d expected to see him here. Is he not?”
“No,” she said. “He’s hunting the Archivist.”
Saleh looked frankly shocked. “On his own?”
“He has help.”
“I hope he knows that,” Saleh murmured, and she almost laughed because it was a very legitimate concern. Wolfe was absolutely capable of believing he alone was tasked with bringing down the world’s most dangerous fugitive. That brought with it a stab of worry, belatedly; he had—she’d heard, at least—Jess with him, but Jess could just as often bring out more recklessness in people. The two of them together might well be a bad combination, especially with the grief that was bound to be consuming Jess just now.
She sincerely hoped Santi was aware of all that.
Murasaki seemed at home on the throne as she began the process of accepting the oaths of her High Garda captains. After that, the Scholars and librarians would renew their oaths as a body, along with the soldiers, and then the ceremony would be done—for them. Murasaki would have to receive the waiting body of diplomats, and then the Alexandrian Merchant Council. She had a very, very long day ahead.
Which meant, as her personal assistant, Khalila did, too.
As the captains finished their oath taking, Khalila embraced her brother again, kissed him on both cheeks, and said, “I have to go to her. Watch after Father?”
“Of course,” he said. “Don’t I always?”
Having a brother like Saleh was a gift, she thought, and she had never prized it as much as she should have done. She gave him a smile and he returned it tenfold, and she withdrew back to stand in the shadows near Scholar Murasaki’s throne, where she could hear any requests easily.
The parade of captains had been a tense time; if the old Archivist had any assassins in their midst, that had been the best moment for them to strike. Khalila noted the positions of High Garda snipers up in the galleries; Santi had taken no chances today, other than the ones imposed upon him. She imagined the man was raw nerves, with Wolfe out exposed to danger and the threat of violence hanging in the air here as well, but when she looked at Santi she saw nothing but calm. Some might think it complacency. Khalila knew he was at his most dangerous like this.
The next phase was the mass renewal of vows from the Scholars, the librarians, and the High Garda rank and file. Khalila spoke the words with them. In the name of sacred knowledge, in the eyes of every god in every corner of this world, I swear my allegiance to the Great Library of Alexandria. I swear to protect the knowledge of this world against all enemies, within and without. I swear to nurture and share such knowledge with all who wish to learn. I swear to live, teach, preserve, study, fight, and die in this cause. The words gave Khalila gooseflesh, woke a breathless light within her. The thunder of thousands of voices together was powerful indeed.
Scholar Murasaki stood, and the cloth-of-gold robe she wore caught fire in the light. She raised her arms. “Knowledge is all.”
“Knowledge is all,” came the response, and then—though it wasn’t part of the ritual—someone let out a wild cheer of victory.
And then they were all cheering, and Khalila was weeping from the force of it. This was the Great Library. Not the old Archivist’s plots and schemes and cold-blooded power struggles. Not the heresy of his Black Archives, where he’d locked up forbidden knowledge. Not the prisons where he interred his enemies.
The soul of the Great Library was here, in this room, and in that transcendent moment with tears warm on her cheeks, she knew she loved it more than she would ever love anything or anyone else save for Allah himself.
* * *
—
Dario arrived late, just as the oath ceremony ended. She saw him slip into the room; he was wearing his Scholar’s robes, and he made his way to her side to whisper, “Forgive me, my love, I had duties. The envoys are waiting under flag of truce.”
“You didn’t take the oath,” she said quietly. The tears were dry on her cheeks; she hadn’t wiped them away. She wanted to feel them there, always.
“I couldn’t,” he said. “Someone had to greet these ambassadors.”
She understood that, but she also knew that on a certain level perhaps Dario preferred it this way. He did believe in the Great Library, most certainly, but like most politically inclined people he always had an eye for the main chance, and just now that trended toward the navies floating outside their harbor. He was of royal Spanish blood, and that would never change. She loved him. But in this one thing, she wasn’t altogether certain she trusted him.
“Well, Wolfe wasn’t here, either,” he said, a bit defensively, and she realized her expression must have betrayed her doubt. “And neither were Jess, Thomas, or Glain. Don’t single me out for doing my duty!”