Ash and Quill Read online

As they filed after her, Jess got a better look at the place. It felt like a real home--more of a home, he thought, than his own house in London had been, though he'd had a mother, a father, one living brother, and rich enough surroundings to give it all the right appearances. Jess had never felt comfortable there, in the Brightwell family residence. He'd been happier in abandoned places, so long as they were quiet and had enough light to read by.

  Books represented home to him, and around every wall, the doctor's shelves were full to bulging, a haphazard organization of varied colors of binding, sizes, shapes. There was a happy disorder about it that made Jess feel something settle inside he hadn't even known was restless. Beside him, Morgan whispered, "So many!" in a tone that was half awe, half horror. Because these weren't Library editions, stamped with the seal and protected in the Archives. They were entirely illegal copies. Ink on paper. Vulnerable. "I didn't know they had so many!" The doctor's house, Jess realized, must be the unofficial library for the town. Nothing so formal as the pretentiously bound editions in Beck's office. Here was the heart of the town. The life that sustained it.

  The hallway beyond was also narrowed on either side by shelves and shelves of volumes, and the smell of old paper struck Jess with memories of his father's warehouses, of curling up with a glow and an original volume in the rafters.

  He'd never really been safe in his childhood, but the books . . . books had made him feel that way.

  Their little group filed silently into the room at the end of the hall, where Santi lay unmoving. His color was some better, if still at least three shades off normal, and his exposed arm looked raw and glistening. Covered in a fresh coating of salve, Jess realized, and the skin beneath looked fragile but healthy. Already healing.

  But Santi's face was damp with sweat, and there was a smell in the room that raised the hackles on the back of his neck. Sweetly rotten--the lingering stench of burned flesh and infection.

  Wolfe sat in a chair next to Santi's bedside, holding his lover's uninjured hand with his left, and an open book in his right. As Jess stepped in, Wolfe let go of Santi to remove small, square glasses from his nose and stow them in a pocket, then put the book aside after slipping a feather in for a bookmark. The doctor had found new clothes for him, sized well, but he looked disconcertingly small in them. Jess was used to seeing him in the smothering, swirling cloud of a Scholar's robe.

  "Close the door," he said, and Dario, the last one in, did so. "Guards?"

  "Outside the house," Jess said. "We're alone, for the moment."

  Wolfe nodded. He looked weary. "Then we'd best use the time well."

  "Sir," Dario said, "is he all right?"

  "He's drugged," Wolfe said. "If he wasn't in an opium haze, he'd be screaming. Try not to ask the stupidly obvious, Santiago."

  Glain said, "Is he going to lose the arm?"

  It was a blunt question, and very like her to say the thing they were all wondering. She put no inflection on it. It was just a request for information.

  "It's hard to know yet," Wolfe said. "The next day will be critical. The burns were . . . significant." He cleared his throat. "Any problems?"

  "No, sir," Khalila said. As always, she was the opposite of Glain; even that simple response had a wealth of gentleness in it. "No need to worry about us. We're fine. All proceeds well enough."

  "And no one has harassed you again about--" He gestured vaguely to his head. She touched her own fingers to her hijab and shook her head. "Good. Not that I worry. I trained you to be sturdier than that." He blinked and looked away. Looked at anything, it seemed, but Captain Santi's still, too-pale face.

  "Sir--" Jess tried to think of something to say that was useful, but his mind was as empty as a snowfield. "Have you eaten?"

  Wolfe shook his head. "Not hungry," he said. "Thomas. Jess. Update."

  "We have most of the parts for the press designed, and we'll start casting tomorrow," Thomas said. "The first mirror will be ready to grind and polish in the morning. That will take most of the day. Jess will be tending to it."

  "Oh, will I?" Jess asked.

  "Yes," Thomas said, with a flash of a grin. "You will. They watch me, because I'm large and sweaty and working with heavy tools. You'll quietly do the important work."

  "The boring, hard, repetitive work of polishing glass?"

  "Well, yes."

  Wolfe gave them a quelling look. "And the tunnels?"

  "Maybe," Jess said. "I'm of the mind that the one they're trying to point us toward is far too obvious. Even Dario noticed the entrance, and no smuggler worth a damn would build a tunnel so exposed." Jess had been turning it over in his mind, and now he looked at Khalila and Dario. "Any chance you can slip away to explore city hall at all?"

  "They can't," Morgan said. "But I might, if I claim to be able to build them a new Translation Chamber. He'd let me explore. He'd keep me guarded, of course, but that doesn't matter. Obscurists can see more than the obvious."

  "No," Jess said, but at the same time, Wolfe said, "Yes," and when Jess paused, Wolfe kept on speaking. "You're the only one who can make a good search of it besides Jess, and he's otherwise needed. And can you make the Translation Chamber work?"

  "Not a chance in the world," she said. "Too long idle. But I did make headway on the other matter."

  Jess knew what that meant, but he could see the others didn't; Khalila whispered something to Dario, who shook his head. Wolfe was trying to keep that quiet, then. And if Wolfe wanted it quiet, it was because it was dangerous to Morgan, who was far too willing to risk it.

  "Then Morgan will look for any sign of tunnels leading into the city hall building--and I think Brightwell is right: it would be the most secure place for smugglers to bring goods, and for any communications to take place between Beck and those from outside."

  "I should be the one to do it," Jess said.

  "Mirror," Thomas reminded him. "And Beck will be receiving reports of where each of us is, what we are doing. Just let her do the job."

  "I'll be fine," Morgan said quietly. Her fingers brushed his, very lightly. "I've survived the Iron Tower. Willinger Beck doesn't frighten me."

  "Still. Don't assume you're safe at any time." Wolfe's smile looked thin, and grim. "I don't assume we're safe here, either."

  "He hasn't given you reason to think . . ."

  "The doctor's done his best," Wolfe said, and swept a dismissive hand at best. "It isn't much. Without Morgan, we'd have lost Nic. Infection carries away many burned with Greek fire, even with modern Medica help. But whatever the doctor's intentions, he can't protect us from Beck."

  And Santi had never been as vulnerable as he was right now, Jess thought. Wolfe referred to us, but he meant Santi, really. He meant that he would not be separated from him as long as Santi couldn't defend himself.

  Morgan had been studying Santi closely, and now she said, quietly, "His fever's still high. I can concentrate the medications in his bloodstream a little more." With that, her fingers moved down a little, to brush the tattoo inked high on Santi's biceps: a lion that snarled in startlingly lifelike blue ink, as if it might leap out of the skin to defend the man. Tattoos were a High Garda tradition. Glain already had three. Jess's first was of a closed book on his chest, over his heart. He felt it described him best.

  He felt sick now that he was watching Morgan expend more energy, but he knew he couldn't stop her if he tried.

  "The captain will be all right," Jess said, which was an empty promise, and he knew it was a mistake the moment he said it.

  Wolfe's gaze snapped to him with a blazing fury, and he said through gritted teeth, "Don't feed me platitudes. I know how bad it is. He protected me. He didn't hesitate, the second he knew we'd been hit with Greek fire. He pushed me down and took the burns for me."

  That, Jess thought, was pure Santi. And here was Wolfe, with that knowledge shimmering like dull flames in his eyes. Hating himself for the sacrifice.

  "He always protects you," Jess said. "He always will. You know t
hat."

  Wolfe blinked and looked away, toward his lover's sleeping face. He reached out and put a gentle hand on Santi's sweating brow. "I know. But I'm perfectly free to give him his Christian hell for it, too."

  Morgan's face had drawn tense with effort and worry, and Jess could see a faint shimmer at the tips of her fingers where she touched Santi's shoulder. She breathed deep and closed her eyes and stood motionless--gone, in a sense. Lost to the rest of them until she came back of her own will.

  "Leave her with us," Wolfe said. He was watching Jess now, as if he knew exactly what Jess was thinking. "I'll make sure she doesn't do too much, and she can have my bed there in the corner. I won't sleep anyway."

  "Do you want us to stay?" Khalila asked him. "Would it help?"

  He shook his head. "Go," he said. "I need you all alert and strong. We're not even beginning our struggles yet."

  "Come on," Dario said quietly--Dario, of all of them, suddenly the sensible one. He tapped Thomas on the arm. "Scholar? Is there anything else we can do?"

  "Pray," Wolfe said. "You can pray."

  Jess was on his way to join the others when his steps slowed. The comfort of these cluttered shelves in the hallway . . . he couldn't quite understand it, but he couldn't deny it. He needed comfort just now, and he stopped to take in a deep breath of the smell of old paper, leather, books. A talisman against that fearful sickroom smell.

  A volume caught his eye, and he pulled it out to look. The dull red leather was stamped Rose Red, Sea Blue. It was, he gathered from skimming the book, a novel . . . one about lovers separated by distance, each pining for the other but thinking the other had abandoned them. The man had been abducted out to sea, to serve on a pirate ship. The woman, thinking herself betrayed, had married another and regretted it. A needlessly dramatic story, no doubt overwritten and dripping with breathless prose, but there was something about it that offered an escape.

  "Take it," a sleepy voice said. Jess nearly dropped the book, but his respect for the written word kept his grip firm as he spun around to find the tall, thin doctor standing there, yawning. His hair was out of the braid, spreading in a fine black silk sheet over his shoulders. He was wearing a loose shirt ghosted with old stains, and a pair of trousers that had seen far better decades. Feet thrust into rough leather sandals that looked painful.

  "I thought you were asleep, sir."

  "I'm not a sir. My people don't have royalty. And I never sleep long. Too much to do." The doctor plucked another book from the shelves--a small green one--and smiled at it like an old friend. "You're shocked by my collection?"

  "Delighted," Jess said. "I think all houses should be stuffed with books. It makes them--"

  "Homes?" the doctor finished. "You are quite the heretic, for someone in a Library uniform."

  "Guilty."

  "Then take the book. Read it. If it pleases you, keep it. I love for them to find good homes." The doctor studied him with a sharpness at odds with the yawns. "Did that Obscurist girl tell you that Beck asked her to join us?"

  "What?" Jess's fingers tightened on the cover of the book.

  "He offered her sanctuary here. Freedom, and her own home. A life without fear of being locked into a collar. They're kept as little better than slaves in that tower, you know. No will of their own--"

  "I know what the Library does to Obscurists," Jess cut in, and the edge in his voice was too sharp. "They'll lock her up, make her work the rest of her life keeping the Archivist Magister and his cronies in power, and breed her like a prize cow--" He stopped, because that crack in the bedrock of his soul had widened with an almost audible snap. "And I'm supposed to believe that the Burners will treat her better? Beck isn't a man who offers things from pure goodness. What kind of slavery will she have here, if he keeps her?"

  The doctor watched him in silence, then said, "Why do you think I warned you? The girl deserves better."

  Jess gripped the book tightly, and left.

  The next day, Jess drowned himself in work. Morgan hadn't come back to her bed in their prison/guesthouse, and it hurt like he'd taken a crippling wound. He spoke little at the workshop, methodically following Thomas's instructions as he crafted more gears. Thomas had removed the stone vessel from the forge first thing, while Diwell fetched his meager breakfast, and quickly poured the thick, honey-colored liquid glass into a set of small frames they'd made ready the night before. Jess set it to cool behind some concealing junk. They both made themselves industrious and busy, and Diwell quickly got bored and took to his chair.

  It was hours before the glass had cooled and hardened. Once it had, Jess nodded to Thomas, who took to heating metal and beating it with hammers, a spectacular show of strength and noise, while Jess took up the sandpaper he'd made earlier and began to polish the small mirrors, with a box of gears ready to pull over to conceal his work if needed. Thomas had explained the process to him and warned him it was exhausting and hard, and he was right: polishing, turning, polishing, turning, always in precise patterns. It made Jess's body ache in ways he'd never known it could. But he kept at it. When Diwell paid attention to him, he worked on cast-metal gears and sanded them to perfection; as soon as the man's attention moved on, it was back to the mirrors.

  For hours, until the glasses were uniform in size, and he'd put in the precisely measured curves that Thomas had asked. Then it was more polishing, this time with a much softer-grit cloth. More hours. More grinding pain in his arms and shoulders, neck and chest.

  Thomas finally called a halt by shoving a pitcher of water under his nose--said nose was dripping with sweat, Jess realized. And outside the barred windows of the workshop, the day had gone well into sunset.

  "Drink," Thomas ordered, and Jess did. The sweet relief of cool water on his parched throat made him realize that he ached in every muscle, and he sank down on a wobbly bench that gave an alarming creak as Thomas sat next to him. Jess gulped half the container and handed it back. Thomas finished it off and put the pewter down. Diwell was snoring in the corner. Loudly.

  Jess passed over the mirrors. Six of them laid out on a soft piece of cloth on the tray. "Will they work?" he asked.

  "They should," Thomas said quietly. He examined them closely and nodded. "We won't know until it's all mounted. But I think yes. I will put everything together, but only when we're ready."

  "We still don't know if it will even work."

  "No," Thomas said. He didn't seem worried. Such an engineer. "But that's why we have different plans on how we exit. Yes?"

  "Sure." Jess leaned back against the dirty, splinter-prone wall and closed his eyes. "What about the press?"

  "I'll have the last pieces cast tomorrow," he said. "Another day to put it together. Then we can set the timing as we like, to let Beck see the fruits of our labor."

  "How fast is Santi healing?"

  Thomas shook his head. Not fast enough. But they had to keep Beck's attention, and there was only one way to do that: show him the goods.

  Jess wiped a dirty cloth over his face. It probably did nothing but spread around the dirt and grime, but at least it dried his sweat a little. "Have you done the pieces of type yet?"

  "Not yet. What language should we start with, do you think? English or Greek?"

  "Both," Jess said. "We want to impress them."

  "Casting will take a day. Then it's just assembly."

  "And then?"

  "Then we show him what he wants to see," Thomas said, and smiled. It was not the same innocent smile he'd had before the cells, before the torments. This one was a cold, confident thing, and it made Jess worry when he saw it. It also made him think, They should be afraid.

  Jess certainly was, for a moment.

  Then the moment passed, and that unsettling smile warmed and shifted, and Thomas stood up. "Come on," he said, and took up the cloth that Jess had used to wipe his sweaty face. He used it to scrub away the charcoal-sketched plans from the wall. "There must be something left to eat. Perhaps Morgan will be back to tell us
good news. And if not, you have a book to read and keep your mind off your troubles."

  True. The promise of food, Morgan, and words on paper made Jess shake off the last of his weariness as he followed Thomas out of the workshop. They had to wake up Diwell on the way out, and he seemed chagrined about it, but grateful they didn't take the opportunity to lock him in.

  It was just after sunset, and Jess saw Khalila in the park across the way; Dario was with her, and she had a small prayer rug that one of the other Muslims in the town must have lent her. She unrolled it on the grass and began her evening prayers. Dario stood silent watch, far enough away that he wasn't a distraction. He nodded to Jess and Thomas as they passed.

  Morgan's was the first face he saw inside the prison walls. She looked as worn and tired as he felt, but she smiled as she set a few pieces of dried fruit and an entirely too small chunk of bread and cheese out. "The doctor sent this," she said. "You two look like you can use the first choice."

  "You're a kind girl, Morgan," Thomas said, and raised his dirty hands to wiggle his fingers. "But we'd better wash first, I think. Charcoal and metal shavings make poor spices." He studied her carefully, seeing the same things Jess had, most likely, and asked the question they both were afraid to pose. "How is he?"

  "Better," she said. "His fever is down, and the skin is healing faster. The infection's gone. He'll be scarred, and it'll be another couple of days before he's strong enough to join us, but he'll be all right."

  Thomas closed his eyes. "Thank God. I prayed, as the Scholar asked."

  Jess had, too. He normally wasn't much for it, but he'd quietly whispered one himself, last night in the darkness. It seemed to have done some good. "Now the problem is to keep him down until he's really healed."

  A stray breeze stirred Morgan's hair and exposed a vulnerable patch of skin just below her ear, where the skin curved sweetly down toward her neck. Jess had kissed that place so recently the memory of it burned. "Well, you know the captain. As soon as he can get up, he will. Wolfe's finally sleeping. He refused to lie down until Santi woke up. His devotion is amazing, though I'm sure he doesn't want anyone to notice. Men. Always so worried about what others think."

  Morgan smiled suddenly, looking directly at Jess, and his mind emptied. She gave him what he was almost certain was a wink, so quick he might have imagined it, and then she turned away to talk to Glain.