Sword and Pen Read online

  “We can’t let that happen,” Jess said.

  “No. Hence the election of a new Archivist.”

  Jess felt the impulse to smile. Didn’t. “And you’re not in the running? I’m astonished.”

  “Shut up, Scrubber.”

  “Touchy, Your Royalness, very touchy.”

  There was something comforting about the casual insults; it felt like home. One constant in this life: he and Dario would always be slightly uneasy friends. Maybe that was a very good thing. He trusted Dario . . . to a point. And of course Dario felt the same about him.

  “Your cousin’s ships are in that fleet,” Jess said. “I don’t suppose you’re feeling some family loyalty today?”

  “If you’re asking if I’m going to betray the Great Library to the Kingdom of Spain, then no. I won’t,” Dario said. “But I don’t want to fight my cousin, either. Not just because I like him. Because he’s a good king, but he’s also clever and ruthless. He’ll win, unless we make the cost of winning unacceptably high. And I’m not altogether certain what he’d consider too high.”

  My brother already died for this, Jess thought. The price is already too high. But he didn’t say it. He swallowed against a sudden tightness in his throat and said, “Where are the others?”

  “Glain and Santi are organizing the city’s defenses. Thomas . . . God knows, most likely off tinkering with one of his lethal toys—not that it isn’t worthwhile. Morgan is with Eskander at the Iron Tower; they’re getting the Obscurists in line.”

  “And what are you doing that’s useful?”

  “Nothing,” Dario said. “You?”

  “Same, at the moment. Want to come with us to the Archivist’s office?”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Very.”

  Dario’s grin was bright enough to blot out Brendan’s absence, for just a moment. “Excellent. I’m as useless as a chocolate frying pan at the moment.”

  “In that jacket?”

  “Well, it is a very fine jacket, to be sure. But not useful.” Dario’s smile faded. He looked at Jess, straight on. “I really am sorry about Brendan.”

  Jess nodded. “I know.”

  “Then let’s get on with it.”

  First Wolfe, now Dario. There was something comforting about their harsh briskness today. Thomas would be different, as would Khalila and Morgan; they’d offer him the chance to let his grief loose. But Wolfe and Dario believed in pushing through, and just now that seemed right to him. Eventually he’d need to confront his demons, but for now, he was content to run from them.

  Wolfe joined them, took in Dario’s presence without comment, and simply swept on. Jess shrugged to Dario and they both followed.

  Off to defy death.

  Seemed like a decent way to start the day.

  * * *

  —

  The sunrise was cool and glorious, reflecting in chips of vivid orange and red on the harbor’s churning waters; the massed fleet of warships that had assembled out in the open sea still floated a good distance away. The Lighthouse had sounded a warning, and it was well-known—at least by legend—that the harbor’s defenses were incredibly lethal. None of the assembled nations had decided yet to test them.

  They would, eventually. And Jess wondered how they were ever going to defeat such a navy. The Great Library had ships of its own, but not so many, and certainly if it came to that kind of a fight, they’d lose.

  Dario was right. The trick was to make the cost too high for anyone to dare make an effort.

  The residential district of Alexandria where they walked had a street that led directly to the hub of the city: the Serapeum, a giant pyramid that rose almost as high as the Lighthouse. The golden capstone on top of it caught the morning light and blazed it back. As the sun rose, it bathed the white marble sides in warmth. From where they walked, Jess could see the Scholar Steps, where the names of Scholars who’d fallen in service to the Library were inscribed. He’d never have his name there, of course; he wasn’t a Scholar or likely to become one. But if there was any justice left in the world, surely one day Wolfe would have that honor. And Thomas. And Khalila.

  Dario would no doubt believe he’d deserve it, and he might even be right.

  “Jess,” Wolfe said. “Heron’s inventions. You’re familiar with them, I would assume.”

  “Which ones? He had thousands. He was the da Vinci of the ancient world.”

  “The lethal ones.”

  “Well, I know as much as anyone, I suppose. Except Thomas, of course. He’d probably give you a two-hour lecture about it, and tell you how to improve them.”

  “A fascinating lecture for which I have neither time nor patience. This isn’t a quiz, Jess. I will depend on you—both of you—to think. Because we go into extremely dangerous territory.”

  “Do you know how to reach the Archivist’s office?” Jess had been brought there several times, but there were precautions: hallways that moved, a maze that constantly shifted its path. The Archivist would have had good reason to fear assassination.

  “His private office? Yes. I know how to reach it.” Wolfe didn’t offer an explanation. “Then things get more dangerous. One doesn’t hold power as long as he did without being prepared.”

  The city seemed so quiet. “Where is everyone?” Jess asked. Normally the streets were crowded with people. Alexandria pulsed with life, had a population in the hundreds of thousands: Scholars, librarians, staff, not to mention all of the people who simply called it home. But today it seemed silent.

  “No one knows what’s going to happen. They’re staying inside, and safe,” Dario said. “Sensible people keep their heads down. Unlike us.”

  He shared a grim smile with Wolfe. “Well,” Wolfe said. “It isn’t the sensible people who get things done in these situations, is it?”

  That describes us perfectly, Jess thought. Not sensible. He imagined Brendan would have been right with him, eager to be reckless.

  The walk was good; it drove the shadows back and made Jess feel almost human again. Sore, of course; the fight to survive had been hard, and he still bore the wounds. Someone—Morgan, he suspected—had applied some healing skills, or he’d have still been confined to a bed. But he felt loose, limber, ready to run or fight.

  He wondered why Morgan had left him, but he knew; she believed her place was with the Obscurists just now. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t care, he told himself. But she hadn’t been there when he’d awakened, hadn’t been there when he needed her most to heal his broken soul, and he knew that did mean something.

  It meant that he would never come first to her. Be honest, he thought. If she came first for you, you’d have done things differently. You’d be with her right now.

  He wasn’t sure what that meant and was too thin and tired inside to think it through. Better to focus on a problem he could solve, an activity he could complete. Leave the difficult questions for later.

  They passed a company of High Garda troops—no informal uniforms there; every soldier was dressed sharply and looked as keen as knives. No one Jess recognized, but he nodded to the squad leader, who returned the greeting with crisp acknowledgment. A second later, he realized how wrong that was, and turned to Wolfe. “I should rejoin my company.” He was wearing the uniform. The wrong uniform for the day, but nevertheless.

  “You’re seconded to me,” Wolfe said. “Santi doesn’t want you back with his company quite yet. You’re more useful here.” His mouth curled in a rare, non-bitter smile. “He thinks you may be able to keep me from my worst excesses of courting danger. I told him that was nonsense, you were as bad or worse, but he wouldn’t have it.”

  That took a moment to sink in, too: Santi trusted Wolfe’s safety to him. When he knew that Jess was running on emotional pain and grief. That’s why. Because Santi was giving him something to keep him from wallowing in the
loss of his twin. It was a brilliantly manipulative maneuver. It kept Wolfe with a semiqualified bodyguard, and at the same time gave that bodyguard a mission when he no doubt badly needed one. And Dario? Surely Santiago hadn’t just appeared at random, either. He was the check to be sure Jess was operating properly, a second pair of eyes on their backs. Dario wasn’t the best fighter of the group, but he was a strategist and a decent tactician, too, and that could be valuable on a mission like this.

  By the time Jess had examined all that, they’d walked to the street that led in front of the Serapeum. The guard posts were manned by High Garda, and roaming automata as well; sphinxes stalked on lion paws, rustling metal wings and staring with red eyes in their sculpted metal human faces. One followed them a few paces, which made Jess nervous; he watched it carefully to be sure it hadn’t been missed in the rewriting of how to identify enemy from friend. But it soon lost interest and padded away to sink down in a comfortable crouch, watching traffic pass.

  “Thank God,” Dario said. He’d noted it, too. “I loathe those things.”

  “You’ve stopped them before.”

  “And will again, I have no doubt. But I’m grateful for each and every time I don’t have to fight for my life. I’m not as clever with them as you are. Or as fearless.”

  That, Jess thought, was pretty remarkable; he’d not heard Dario confess something like that in quite a while. Possibly ever. The Spaniard naturally assumed he was the best at absolutely everything, and even when proven wrong often insisted until everyone half believed him. It had taken some time for Jess to overcome his general annoyance and realize what a vulnerability that large an ego could be. He hadn’t yet used that knowledge against Dario. He hadn’t needed to.

  But it was always good to spot a weakness, even in an ally and friend.

  Scholar Wolfe hadn’t been exaggerating; he did know how to reach the Archivist’s office. It involved a journey past sharp-eyed High Garda, more automata—including an Anubis-masked god statue that made Jess flash back to his dream and the reality it had mirrored—down hallways that seemed different to what Jess remembered. “It’s a self-aligning maze,” Wolfe told him when he pointed that out. “There are keys. You look for them encoded in the decorations. The alignments depend on the time, day, month, and year. Rather clever. Heron himself invented the machinery.” Jess almost turned to Thomas to comment on that, ready for the German’s effusive happiness; Thomas worshipped Heron almost as a god himself. But Thomas wasn’t with them. And it surprised Jess how much that dimmed his mood.

  “Let’s just get on with it,” he said, and Wolfe gave him an appraising look, then nodded and led them on without more discussion. The path took them through the forbidding interior Hall of Gods, with all the giant, silent automata on their plinths . . . except for the ones who’d been dispatched to the Colosseum to kill the Library’s rebels. Those had been hacked apart. If they were ever to be rebuilt, Jess thought, maybe it would be better to sculpt them out of stone or simple metal. Make them symbols instead of weapons.

  But he’d rather not see them again, ever.

  They arrived in a hub of halls that led out in spokes; those held the offices of the Curia. All of them dead now, or fled with the Archivist. The quiet seemed ominous.

  “This is a bit tricky as well,” Wolfe said, and showed the two of them where, how, and when to press certain keys on the wall to open the hallway to the Archivist’s private office. “Elite High Garda soldiers would normally be in charge of this. Good thing they’re all gone.”

  “Are they?” Dario asked. “How do we know they didn’t flee here and fortify his office? There could be an entire company of the bastards waiting for us.”

  It was a decent question, and better warning. Jess drew his sidearm. From beneath his robe, Wolfe produced something else; it took a moment for Jess to recognize it, but the elegantly crafted lines gave it away. Thomas’s work. That was a Ray of Apollo, upgraded and with better materials. Lethally concentrated light.

  “Better to be sure,” Wolfe said, and switched the weapon on. Jess made sure his own was set to killing shots, and nodded. When Jess looked back at Dario, he found the Spaniard had produced a very lovely sword, filigreed and fancied to within an inch of its life but no less dangerous for that in the hands of an expert. Which Dario was. He also had a High Garda gun in his left hand, the mirror of Jess’s.

  “You know how to use that?” Jess nodded at the gun. Dario gave him one of his trademark one-raised-eyebrow mocking looks.

  “Better than you, scrubber.”

  Untrue. Dario could certainly kill him with a sword, but Jess was a very good shot. Unless the arrogant royal had been drilling in target practice with that likely stolen gun, he wasn’t going to match any High Garda soldier.

  Trust Dario to think he could.

  Didn’t matter, at least at the moment. Jess followed Wolfe into the hallway that revealed itself, and down the spacious, carpeted expanse. This, he remembered. The carpet alone was worth half a kingdom, and the recovered Babylonian walls with their Assyrian lions were just as impressive. An ancient Chinese jade vase as delicate as an eggshell glowed under a skylight.

  And there was the neat, clean desk ahead. The desk of the Archivist’s assistant, Neksa—Neksa, whom Brendan had loved. Who’d died for their sins.

  Wolfe paused at her desk and looked at the two of them, each in turn. “Ready?” he asked. Jess nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dario echo him. He felt the hot tension of his nerves, and that was good. Paranoia was a habit these days, but it also might help him stay alive today. Might. No fear, though. That seemed wrong, but temporarily useful.

  Wolfe pressed a button on Neksa’s desk, and the door behind it slid open. Wolfe held up a hand to stop them from rushing in, but he needn’t have bothered; neither of them moved. They watched and listened from where they were. There was natural light streaming in from the expanse of windows that overlooked the harbor and the threatening mass of ships clustered on the horizon. Storm clouds were forming out to sea as well. That would complicate things.

  Nothing moved in the office, and Jess carefully inched forward and flattened himself against the outer wall at an angle, the better to see into the far, shadowy corners within.

  “There’s no one,” he said. He didn’t relax. When Dario tried to move past him, he stopped him with an upraised arm. “Pressure plates?”

  “Hmmm.” Dario looked around. There was a statue of a serene Buddha in the corner of the assistant’s office. The Buddha held a heavy jade orb in both hands. Dario went to it and carefully lifted the stone out of the statue’s grasp.

  He put the ball down and used his booted foot to roll it into the Archivist’s office. As it reached the center of the carpet in front of the massive desk, the automata in the room came to life. Gods, stepping down from their plinths. Anubis. Bast. Horus. Isis. They stared at the inert orb for a long moment with fiery red eyes, and then stepped back up where they’d been. Inert.

  “Their coding is still active,” Dario said, quite unnecessarily. It was clear the automaton gods would cut them to bloody strips if they set foot in the office itself. “Scholar? I think this has to be your job. Since you have the weaponry to match.”

  “No,” Jess said, and held his gun out to Wolfe. “Trade me.”

  “I’m not sure that’s wise,” Wolfe said. A frown formed, pulling his brows together. Jess knew that look. It was close to a glare, but lightened with a fair bit of concern.

  He felt himself grin. “Don’t worry. I don’t want to join my brother. Someone’s got to explain things to my father, and much as I’d like to avoid that, it should probably be me.”

  Wolfe didn’t like it, but he allowed Jess to take the Ray of Apollo, and without hesitation, Jess strode into the office, came to a stop exactly in the center of the carpet, and waited for the automata to react.

  They moved fast, but
he was faster. He activated the weapon, and a thick, shockingly bright beam of coherent light jumped into being from the barrel; he held the trigger down and sliced it from left to right in an arc, severing Horus at the waist, then Bast, Anubis, and Isis. It took only a couple of seconds, a single heartbeat, and then there were inert mechanical legs and the statues’ upper bodies toppling backward. Useless. By the time he released the trigger, he’d killed four gods.

  It felt horribly wonderful. He stared at Anubis’s face. The red eyes were still lit, but as he watched they faded to ash gray. Empty.

  For you, he thought to Brendan. Not that any of these had killed his brother, but until he could reach the traitor who had, he’d take what satisfaction he could.

  He’d dropped the last automaton in the same spot where Neksa had died here in this room, murdered by a mechanical’s spear just to prove that the Archivist didn’t make idle threats.

  I’ll kill Zara for you, brother, he thought. And then I’ll kill that old bastard. For Neksa.

  But he didn’t say that. Not in front of Dario and Wolfe, who were stepping into the room and observing the damage. “Well,” Dario said. “That is quite a thing Thomas has made. He frightens me sometimes.”

  “He frightens himself,” Wolfe said. “Because he always worries how what he creates can be misused. And for someone with his particular genius, that’s a very difficult trait.” He held out his hand to Jess, and Jess gave him back the Ray. “Feel better?”

  That was the moment when Jess’s euphoria snapped, and he realized he’d let himself get complacent. One trap? Just one? No. The Archivist would have more. And they needed to be alert.

  “Careful,” he said as Wolfe approached the Archivist’s massive desk. “It’ll be trapped.”

  “Oh, I know.” Wolfe dismissed it with an irritated wave. “I know his mind well enough. The old dog never did learn a new trick once he sat his behind in that chair.”