Paper and Fire Read online

  ALSO BY RACHEL CAINE

  THE GREAT LIBRARY

  Ink and Bone

  Prince of Shadows

  THE MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES NOVELS

  Glass Houses

  The Dead Girls' Dance

  Midnight Alley

  Feast of Fools

  Lord of Misrule

  Carpe Corpus

  Fade Out

  Kiss of Death

  Ghost Town

  Bite Club

  Last Breath

  Black Dawn

  Bitter Blood

  Fall of Night

  Daylighters

  Midnight Bites

  (short story collection)

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright (c) Rachel Caine LLC, 2016

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  New American Library and the New American Library colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA: Names: Caine, Rachel, author.

  Title: Paper and fire / Rachel Caine.

  Description: New York, New York: New American Library, [2016] | Series: The Great Library; 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016000404 (print) | LCCN 2016005835 (ebook) | ISBN

  9780451472403 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698180826 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Libraries--Fiction. | Alexandrian Library--Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance. | GSAFD: Alternative histories (Fiction) | Dystopias.

  Classification: LCC PS3603.O557 P37 2016 (print) | LCC PS3603.O557 (ebook) |

  DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000404

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To the scholars. To the students. To the librarians.

  To those who fight for all of those every day.

  Shine the light.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have many people to thank for the very existence of this book, including my husband, R. Cat Conrad (who has been extremely patient during a difficult writing process); my amazing assistant, Sarah Weiss (ditto); my agent, Lucienne Diver (double double ditto); and my editor, Anne Sowards, She of the Greatest Patience of All, Ever.

  Special thanks to my sanity readers, Tez, Sarah, Becky Tyree, and Sarah Tyree.

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY RACHEL CAINE

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER ONE

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER TWO

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER THREE

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER SIX

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EPHEMERA

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SOUND TRACK

  EPHEMERA

  Excerpt from a report delivered via secure message to the Archivist Magister, from the hand of the Artifex

  I thought that you were being soft when you ordered us to keep the boy alive, but he's been incredibly useful already. As you said, a brilliant mind. When we allow him access to books and papers, which we do as a reward, his observations on engineering are quite groundbreaking. After compelling him using the usual means, we provided him with chalk, and on the walls of his cell he began to write some unusual calculations and diagrams. These I have enclosed for your review.

  He also had observations, which he confided to a guard I had ordered to be friendly to him, about the maintenance of the automata within the prison. Clever boy. And dangerous. He might have succeeded in turning one of them to his own uses if we hadn't kept a constant watch.

  I know you want to keep him alive, but even after this long, he continues to be outwardly cooperative and inwardly quite stubborn. I haven't seen the like since . . . well, since his mentor, Scholar Christopher Wolfe.

  As bright as he is, I don't know how we can ever control him completely. It would be far kinder to kill him now.

  Reply from the Archivist Magister, via secure message

  Under no circumstances are you to kill the boy.

  I have great plans for him.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Every day, Jess Brightwell passed the Spartan warrior statue on his way to and from his quarters. It was a beautifully made automaton, fluid and deadly, with a skin of burnished copper. It stood in a dynamic pose on its pedestal, with a spear ready to thrust, and was both a decoration and a protection against intruders.

  It wasn't supposed to be a threat to those who belonged here.

  Now, as he passed it, the shadowed eyes under the helmet flickered and flared red, and the Spartan's head turned to track his passage. Jess felt the burn of those eyes, but he didn't return the stare. It would take only an instant for that form to move and that spear to drive right through him. He could feel the very spot the point would enter like a red, tingling target on his back.

  Not now! Jess sweated, terribly aware of the leather smuggling harness strapped to his chest, and the slender original book hidden inside. Calm. Be calm. It was incredibly difficult, not only because of the threat of the automaton but because of the anger that burned inside him. As he walked away, the tingle in his back rose to a hot burn, and he waited for the rush of movement and the horrible invasion of the spear stabbing through his body . . . But then he was a step past, two steps, and the attack didn't come.

  When he looked back, the statue had gone back to resting mode, staring straight ahead blindly. It seemed safe. It wasn't. Jess Brightwell lived on sufferance and luck at the Great Library of Alexandria. If he'd been half as clever as his friend Thomas Schreiber, he would have figured out how to disable these things by now . . .

  Don't think about Thomas. Thomas is dead. You have to keep that thought firm in your head or you'll never make it through this.

  Jess paused in the dark, cool tunnel that led from the Spartan's entrance into the wider precincts of the complex where he was quartered. There was no one here to watch him, no fellow travelers at either end of the tunnel. The automaton couldn't see him. Here, for this one sheltered moment, he could allow himself to feel.

  Anger sparked red and violent inside, heated his skin and tensed his muscles, and the tear
s that stung his eyes were driven by rage as much as grief. You lied, Artifex, he thought. You lying, cruel, evil bastard. The book in the harness on his chest was proof of everything he'd hoped for the past six months. But hope was a malicious, jagged thing, all spikes and razors that churned and cut deep in his guts. Hope was a great deal like fear.

  Jess bounced his head against the stones behind him, again, again, again, until he could get control of the anger. He forced it back into a black box, buried deep, and secured it with chains of will, then wiped his face clear. It was morning, still so early that dawn blushed the horizon, and he was tired out of his skin. He'd been chasing the book he smuggled now for weeks, giving up meals, giving up rest, and finally he'd found it. It had cost him an entire night's sleep. He'd not eaten, except for a quick gyro from a Greek street vendor nearly eight hours past. He'd spent the rest of the time hiding in an abandoned building and reading the book three times, cover to cover, until he had every single detail etched hot into his memory.

  Jess felt gritty with exhaustion and trembled with hunger, but he knew what he had to do.

  He had to tell Glain the truth.

  He didn't look forward to that at all, and the idea made him bounce his skull off the stones one more time, this time more gently. He pushed off, checked his pulse to be sure it was steady again, and then walked out of the tunnel to the inner courtyard--no automata stationed here, though sphinxes roamed the grounds on a regular basis. He was grateful not to see one this time and headed to his left, toward his barracks.

  After a brief stop to wolf down bread and drink an entire jug of water, he moved on and avoided any of the early risers in the halls who might want to be social. He craved a shower and mindless sleep more than any conversation.

  He got neither. As he unlocked his door and stepped inside, he found Glain Wathen--friend, fellow survivor, classmate, superior officer--sitting bold as brass in the chair by his small desk. Tall girl, made sleek with muscle. He'd never call her pretty, but she had a comfortable, easy assurance--hard won these past months--that made her almost beautiful in certain lights. Force of personality if nothing else.

  The Welsh girl was calmly reading, though she closed the Blank and returned it to his shelf when he shut the door behind him.

  "People will talk, Glain," he said. He had no temper for this right now. He needed, burned, to tell her what he'd learned, but at the same time he was on the precarious edge of emotion, and he didn't want her of all people to see him lose control. He wanted to rest and face her fresh. That way, he wouldn't break into rage, or just . . . break.

  "One thing you learn early growing up a girl--people always talk, whatever you do," Glain said. "What bliss it must be to be male." Her tone was sour, and it matched her expression. "Where have you been? I had half a mind to call a search party."

  "You damn well know better than to do that," he said, and if she was going to stay, fine. He had no qualms about stripping off his uniform jacket and unbuttoning his shirt. They'd seen each other in all states as postulants struggling to survive Wolfe's class, and the High Garda wasn't a place that invited modesty, either.

  He really must have been too tired to think, because his fingers were halfway down the buttons on his shirt when he realized she'd see the smuggling harness, which was a secret he didn't feel prepared to share just yet. "A little privacy?" he said, and she raised her dark eyebrows but got up and turned her back. He didn't take his eyes off her as he stripped off the shirt and reached for the buckles of the leather harness that held the book against his chest. "I need sleep, not conversation."

  "Too bad. You won't get any of the former," she told him. "We're due for an exercise in half an hour. Which is why I was looking for you. The orders came after you'd gone sneaking into the night. Where exactly did you go, Jess?"

  Jess. So they weren't on military footing now, not that he'd really thought they were. He sighed, left the harness on, and replaced the old shirt with a fresh one. "You can turn," he said, as he finished the buttons. She did, hands clasped behind her back, and stared at him with far too much perception.

  "If that bit of false-modesty theater was meant to distract me from the fact you're wearing some kind of smuggling equipment under that shirt, it failed," she said. "Have you gone back into the family business?"

  The Brightwells had a stranglehold on the London book trade, and had fingers in every black market across the world, one way or another; he had never told her that, but somehow, he also wasn't surprised she knew. Glain liked to learn everything she could about those close to her. It was a smart strategy. He'd done the same with her, the only daughter of a moderately successful merchant who'd nearly bankrupted himself to earn her a place at the Library. She'd been raised with six brothers. None of them, despite sharing her strong build and height, had been inclined at all to military life. Glain was exactly what she seemed: a strong, capably violent young woman who cared about her abilities, not her looks.

  "If you're a Brightwell, you're never really out of the family business," he said, and sat down on his bed. The mattress yielded, and he wanted to stretch out and let it cradle him, but if he did, he knew he'd be asleep in seconds. "You didn't just barge in here to make sure I was still alive, did you?"

  "No." She sounded amused and completely at ease again. "I needed to ask you a question."

  "Well? As you said, we've got only half an hour--"

  "Somewhat less now," she said. "Since we're having this conversation. What do you know about the Black Archives?"

  That stopped him cold. He'd expected her to ask something else, something more . . . military. But instead, it took his tired brain a moment to scramble to the new topic. He finally said, "That they're a myth."

  "Really." Scorn dripped from that word, and she leaned back against the wall behind her. "What if I told you that I heard from someone I trust that they're not?"

  "You must have slept through your childhood lessons." He switched to a childish singsong. "'The Great Library has an Archive, where all the books they save--'"

  "'Not fire or sword, not flood or war, will be the Archive's grave,'" Glain finished. "I memorized the same childhood rhymes you did. But I'm talking about the other Archives. The forbidden ones."

  "The Black Archives are a story to frighten children--that's all. Full of dangerous books, as if books could be dangerous."

  "Some might be," she said. "And Dario doesn't think it's a myth."

  "Dario?" Jess said. "Since when do you believe anything Dario Santiago says? And why is he talking to you at all?"

  She gave him a long unreadable smile. "Maybe he just wants to keep track of what you get up to," she said. "But back to the subject. If it's where they keep dangerous information, then I say that's a place that we need to look for any hints about what happened to send Thomas to his death. And who to go after for it. Don't you?"

  Thomas. Hearing his best friend's name said aloud conjured up his image behind Jess's eyes: a cheerfully optimistic genius in the body of a German farm boy. He missed Thomas, who'd had all the warmth and understanding of others that Jess lacked. I can't think about him. For a wild instant, he thought he'd either shout at her or cry, but somehow he managed to keep his voice even as he said, "If such a place as the Black Archives even exists, how would we go about getting into it? I hope Dario has an idea. I don't."

  "You know Dario--he's always got an idea," Glain said. "Something to think on, anyway. Something we can do. I know you want to find out how and why Thomas died as much as I do."

  "The Archivist told us why," he said. "Thomas was convicted of heresy against the Library." Tell her what you know, for God's sake. The thought beat hard against his brain, like a prisoner battering at a door, but he just wasn't ready. He couldn't tell what saying the words out loud, making them real, might do to him.

  "I don't believe that for a moment," Glain said softly. Her dark eyes had gone distant and the look in them sad. "Thomas would never have done anything, said anything to deserve tha
t. He was the best of us."

  Just tell her. She deserves to know!

  He finally scraped together just enough courage and drew in a deep, slow breath as he looked up to meet her eyes. "Glain, about Thomas--"

  He was cut off by a sudden hard rapping on the door. It sounded urgent, and Jess bolted up off the bed and crossed to answer. He felt half relieved for the interruption . . . until he swung it open, and his squad mate Tariq Oduya shouldered past Jess and into the room. He held two steaming mugs, and thrust one at Jess as he said, "And here I thought you'd be still lagging in bed . . ." His voice trailed off as he caught sight of Glain standing against the wall. She had her arms crossed, and looked as casual as could be, but Tariq still grinned and raised his eyebrows. "Or maybe you just got up!"

  "Stuff it," Glain said, and there was no sign of humor in her expression or voice. She moved forward to take the second cup from Tariq and sipped it, never mind that it was probably his own. "Thanks. Now be about your business, soldier."

  "Happy to oblige, Squad Leader," he said, and mock saluted. Technically, they were off duty, but he was walking a tightrope, and Jess watched Glain's face to see if she intended to slice through it and send him falling into the abyss for the lack of respect.

  She just sipped the hot drink and watched Tariq without blinking until he moved to the door.

  "Recruit Oduya," she said as he stepped over the threshold. "You do understand that if I hear a whisper of you implying anything about this situation, I'll knock you senseless, and then I'll see you off the squad and out of the High Garda."

  He turned and gave her a proper salute. His handsome face was set in a calm mask. "Yes, Squad Leader. Understood."

  He closed the door behind him. Jess took a gulp of the coffee and closed his eyes in relief as the caffeine began its work. "He's a good sort. He won't spread rumors."

  Glain gave him a look of utter incredulity. "You really don't know him at all, do you?"

  In truth, Jess didn't. The squad had bonded tightly, but he'd held himself apart from that quite deliberately; he'd formed deep friendships in his postulant class and seen some of those friends dismissed, injured, and dead. He wasn't about to open himself up to the same pain again.

  Still, he considered Tariq the closest he had to a friend, except for Glain. Glain he trusted.