“Do you know the history of that sword?” Dario said.
“Do you want to live to have heirs to carry it, Your Highness?”
Jess rolled back to a crouch. Wolfe was still at the desk. The mist was drifting just a handsbreadth above his curling, graying hair. “Scholar! Now!”
“One moment!”
“You don’t have it!”
“Just one more drawer.”
He was not going to explain to Captain Nic Santi how he happened to get Santi’s lover killed on his watch, especially not when it was purely Wolfe’s stubbornness putting them in danger.
So Jess stopped arguing. He rose, grabbed Wolfe by the back of his robe, and shoved him toward the door. When Wolfe struggled, he kicked the back of the man’s knees and pushed him down under Dario’s outstretched bracing leg. “Crawl!” Jess shouted.
Then he turned and ran back to the desk, because if Wolfe had been willing to die for whatever was in that last drawer, it was probably important.
EPHEMERA
Text of a letter from the Archivist in Exile to the head of the Burners within Alexandria. Delivered by hand in written form only. Available in the Codex only as a copy from later collection.
Hail, friend. I regret not using your proper name, but as I do not know it, it is impossible. I hope you forgive this breach of protocol, as my prior correspondence was only with the former leader. Opposed as the Great Library and the Burners are, we have occasionally had common cause together. And now, we do again.
I write to you now, in our most desperate hour, with an offer that only I can make to you: absolute victory. Victory for your cause. If you will join your forces with mine to retake the city and expel or eradicate these upstart rebels who seek to take control of the Great Library, against all tradition and sense . . . then I will personally guarantee a policy change that will allow for the collection and preservation of original works by individuals, unmonitored by the Great Library or its High Garda. I will repeal the ages-old prohibition. I will strike down the law that imposes a penalty of death for the hoarding of such originals, and the sale and trade of them. I will indemnify your Burners from any and all prosecution for the remainder of their lives for any acts committed before or after against the laws of the Great Library, including the murder of our Scholars and librarians. You say a life is worth more than a book.
Now I ask you to prove it.
Save our lives. Help us take this city back.
Kill the falsely elected Archivist. Kill Scholar Christopher Wolfe, Khalila Seif, Dario Santiago, Jess Brightwell, Thomas Schreiber, Glain Wathen, and High Garda Captain Santi. Kill them and show me proof.
Then I will discuss additional payment.
CHAPTER TWO
JESS
Jess stayed low and attacked the last drawer with a strong pull. It didn’t open. Damn. The mist pressed down on him, and there was a smell that preceded it, like bitter flowers. It burned the back of his throat, a tingle that only grew stronger when he swallowed. Not the immolating stench of Greek fire, though that was what he’d feared. No, this was something else.
Possibly worse. Much worse. He had no idea of the kinds of terrible plagues and weapons the Archivist had kept in his storehouses. Few would. But they would be lethal.
Jess pulled his sidearm and fired it into the drawer’s lock, shattering it, and then shoved his finger into the ragged hole and pulled until it yielded with a sudden snap. By then he was on his knees, and he couldn’t remember dropping. The taste in his throat and the smell confused him. What was he doing? Why had he forced it open?
Papers. Grab the papers.
He folded clumsy fingers around the thick handful and tried to rise. Couldn’t. His eyes burned. His throat felt numb and seared. Breathing was an effort. Easier to stay here, easier to just . . . wait.
Someone was shouting his name. You need to move, he told himself, but his body felt like an unfamiliar doll. He couldn’t remember how to move, but slowly, agonizingly, he folded over and pressed his face to the soft carpet. The air was clearer here, and he gasped it in little bursts, a landed and dying fish.
The voices were coming from the doorway. He crawled in that direction. The mist pressed relentlessly down on him, heavy, so heavy he felt it like a steel wall against his back that weighed him down, and it was too hard to keep moving.
He was choking on the mist. It filled his throat like cement.
I’m dying, he thought. He felt some panic, but it was muted and at a distance. He pulled himself another scant few inches forward. It wasn’t enough.
And then hands were pulling him forward with a sudden jerk, and it seemed like he was flying through the air and landing in a limp sprawl, gasping, spitting, a foul foam coming from his mouth. I’m a mad dog. It almost made him laugh, but then his stomach rebelled and he curled in on himself and tried to breathe. Couldn’t without his throat closing up. Someone pried his mouth open and poured in something that burned; he spit it out. They tried again. This time, it scorched down his abraded throat and all the way to his stomach. He thought it was liquor until the fourth drink, and then he suddenly realized it was just water. Only water. The clear air bathed his brain in oxygen again, and now he could think, if clumsily.
“You stupid fool!” That sounded like Dario, but the voice seemed oddly unsteady. When Jess rolled over on his back he saw Dario kneeling over him holding a pitcher of water, now almost empty. The young man’s hand was shaking, and so was the glass vessel. Dario set it down without comment. “Do you know how close you came? Do you?”
Oh. The Archivist’s office. He’d gone back for the papers. Did he still have them? He raised his hands. No. He didn’t. He felt a vast chasm of despair, and a huge spasm of coughing racked through him, pumping rancid green foam from his mouth again. His head pounded. He ached in every muscle. He shivered all over in convulsive tremors.
He’d failed.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “Papers. Lost.”
“Not lost,” Wolfe said. “You held on to them. Somehow.”
Jess looked up once his muscles unlocked again. The Scholar was fanning the documents out on the desk that once belonged to Neksa, studying them with great intensity. He looked pale. Beads of sweat ran down his face, but there was no mistaking the intensity on his face. Or the relief. “You found it,” he said, and glanced over at the two of them. “Thank you. Both of you.”
“Just tell me it was worth what it nearly cost,” Dario snapped. “Because you almost had a second dead Brightwell to explain!”
Wolfe went still, and his expression blanked. Jess remembered a second later—only a second this time, a delay and then a deadly, detonating flash of knowledge—that his brother was dead.