Ash and Quill Page 9

  "I'm ready," he said, and together, they turned and headed off. His shoulder blades itched, waiting to feel any hint of movement behind, but when he glanced back, the native soldier had gone back to take up his post against the wall.

  However, their trailing guard had decided to greatly close the gap. Inconvenient, and it kept Jess from talking to Dario until they were in the next street and the rattle of a passing cart--drawn by a single, exhausted horse, the poor creature--loaded with scavenged materials provided enough noise to cover it. Jess spoke fast, and to the point. "Couldn't see the tunnel, but look there." He pointed quickly toward a weathered, half-burned old tree that grew in the no-man's-land between the wall and the street. "See the mark?"

  "No," Dario whispered back, and then the cart was past them, and they had to go quiet again. It wasn't until they were inside the cramped, reeking confines of the shop--a generous word for it; Jess thought repurposed privy might have been a better one--and looking at sad piles of broken glass sorted by color on the warped floor that they had another chance to talk. The place held no attraction for their guard; he stayed outside, in the fresher air. There weren't any other ways out. "What mark?"

  "Two parallel lines and a circle," Jess said. "Means a tunnel controlled by the Comprehensive." Dario gave him a blank glance. "Group of smugglers."

  "Run by your family?"

  "No. Rivals. It's a problem." Jess crouched and looked at the clear glass pile. The largest pieces were the size of his hand, but those were rare. Most were just barely better than slivers.

  He stood up and gestured at the tiny woman who stood half asleep at the back of the shop. "How much?"

  "For what?"

  "All of this. The clear."

  She blinked. "In exchange for what fortune?"

  Jess looked at Dario. Steadily. Until the Spaniard sighed and produced a very fine money pouch. A fat one. "You're taking my roach-racing winnings, you know."

  "Why do you think I brought you along, for pleasant company?"

  "Ass." Dario handed over the pouch, and when the woman opened it, she gave an audible gasp and clutched it to her chest. She pushed a threadbare bag across with her foot.

  "Take it," she said. "Go."

  "Everybody wants us gone," Dario said, and picked up the bag and thrust it toward Jess. "You get the glass splinters. I paid."

  Dario was right. It wasn't fun, handling the broken glass, but Jess took the cuts and jabs in stride. He'd had worse, and would again. Once he was done, he lifted the heavy, crunching bag and tried to think how best to carry it without giving his back a scratching it would never forget.

  The woman held out a second, thicker bag. "Free," she said, and smiled just a little. "It's easy to get hurt, you know."

  Her arm was in the light from the door, and he saw the scars then, old and new layered into gnarled patterns. Her fingers looked raw. It was like looking at a map of pain, and he had to shake his head. "No," he said. "I can bear a few more scars. You keep that."

  Once they were outside, he carefully put the bag over his shoulder and winced at the immediate sharp bites . . . but it was bearable. Dario said nothing, just shook his head. "You're an idiot," he said. "You should have taken it."

  "You gave her all your money. She probably wouldn't have asked for half that much."

  Dario shrugged, eloquently. "Philadelphian notes. Worthless. Let her have the use of it."

  Truth was, Jess thought, that money could have bought Dario meat, bad liquor, all manner of indulgences. But Dario didn't like to be thought of as anything like kind.

  So Jess just said, "Let's go find the rest of Thomas's shopping list."

  EPHEMERA

  Text of a work from the Black Archives, untitled, credited to Heron of Alexandria. Not indexed in the Codex.

  I have written before on the curvature of metals, and the reflections of light that may be done with such. The simplest use is a mirror, which reflects light upon the viewer. But light may also be concentrated in a series of highly polished mirrors, sending it from one surface to another to another, until the light is so bright and it becomes a solid thing, like a beam of fire. I have achieved this effect upon three occasions. With one, I used mirrors the size of shields, and was able to set alight a distant tree, which burned as if Zeus himself had cast down lightning upon it. In the second case, I used a finely polished set of jewels loaned to me by the gracious hand of Pharaoh, and the result was much stronger, and much smaller in width. Upon the third attempt, I seated these highly polished gems within an array of holders, precisely set to amplify the light, and contained it within a tube of brass. This attempt, shown before Pharaoh, melted through seven feet of thick, hardened iron, to the awe and terror of his court.

  It is the power of Apollo contained within mortal hands, and by the order of Pharaoh, I have been ordered not to continue these experiments, for the gods will not share such wonders without punishment.

  The will of Pharaoh is ever wise.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Working with Thomas was like being a student playing next to a master pianist. Not that Jess didn't have aptitude; he was good at whittling parts from spare scraps of wood to Thomas's specifications, and then transferring those models to a hot wax impression, ready for casting. Thomas measured and cut what little good, solid wood they'd been given, and spent his time at the forge, melting scrap metal and casting the gears.

  When he wasn't sweating in front of the forge, Thomas had a strange way of staring at the empty space in the middle of the workroom, walking around and around it as if he were examining an actual machine that stood there.

  Jess finally left off carving to stare at him. "You really can see it, can't you?" he asked.

  "Yes, of course. It's right there." Thomas raised his eyebrows and pointed to the plans they'd sketched again, in charcoal, on the wall. Jess shook his head.

  "Yes, I can see the plans. But you see the whole thing already built, don't you? All the way around?"

  "Of course," Thomas said. "You don't? How else do you create something that doesn't exist?"

  Jess tried creating that machine in his imagination, but the sketch--though he understood it--remained stubbornly as flat as the charcoal on the wall. "I don't think I'm meant for a gold band," he said, and grinned. "And I think you always were, Scholar Schreiber."

  Thomas turned and looked at him. "I'm not really a Scholar."

  "Didn't anyone tell you? Wolfe commissioned you. Lifetime appointment, gold band and all. When they told us you were dead, you were entered on the rolls as an honor. There was a ceremony. They put your name in hieroglyphs on the Scholar Steps." It had been, Jess thought, a somber and emotional afternoon; just six of them together on the vast Serapeum steps while an Egyptian priest intoned a prayer for the dead. Morgan had been gone in the Iron Tower, and Thomas . . . Thomas had been screaming in a cell underneath the streets of Rome.

  "I didn't think--" Thomas broke off. "I--don't know what to feel. The Library did try to kill me. But--"

  "But it's the only thing you ever wanted," Jess finished when Thomas didn't. "It's complicated." What he didn't say was maybe it was worse that Thomas had been granted that dream, given how things stood now. Chances were, Thomas would never wear the gold band he so richly deserved.

  Thomas shook his head and--incredibly, to Jess--smiled. "It's fine, Jess. An honor. And it's not all I want. I want to build. And we are going to do that, right now. Yes?"

  "Yes."

  Thomas walked over and studied the gear. "Almost right."

  "Almost?"

  "Smoother here, yes?" Somehow, getting a correction from Thomas didn't make Jess feel foolish; he nodded and took up a file to fix the problem. "It's late. Are you tired?"

  "Do you have any idea what High Garda training is like? They run you until you forget how to be tired. No, I'm fine. How much have we done?"

  "We are a third complete, I think. Though we need to make extras of several of these gears. I'm not confident they'll tak
e the stress even from the test. They must last for a few passes."

  Jess put the finishing touches on the wooden model before handing it over. Thomas walked to the empty space, held out the wooden gear in a precise location, and cocked his head as he stared. It was the eeriest thing, Jess thought; he could actually see Thomas thinking. The power radiating out of that head seemed to fill the space around them with energy. Maybe Thomas had been right in his observation that geniuses and Obscurists had something in common.

  "This is good," Thomas said, and tossed the gear back to him with a sudden flash of a grin. "Twenty more to go, yes?"

  "I hate you." Jess put the tools down and stretched. His hands ached, and so did his back; his eyes burned from focusing in the dim light. "Maybe we should stop for the night after all."

  "I knew the High Garda had no real stamina," Thomas said as he scrubbed the plans from the wall. "I'll bank the coals in the forge. A drop of Greek fire will bring it up in the morning." He nodded toward the guard--Diwell again--who dozed in the corner. By which Jess knew he meant, Distract him. So as Thomas carefully, quietly hefted the flimsy bag full of broken glass, Jess moved over to a large pile of scrap metal that he'd taken care to build up to tottering heights all day, and on Thomas's cue, he shoved the whole thing over.

  The noisy racket of metal clanging together drowned out the tinkling sounds of the glass being poured into a thick stone bowl, and Thomas quickly picked it up and shoved it into the forge, then banged the door closed. Diwell came upright, tripped, and had his gun out and aimed at Jess and Thomas within a respectable few seconds, though he was smart enough not to fire. Thomas had managed to throw the empty bag into the forge, and all trace of it was already gone.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Diwell barked. Thomas slowly held up his hands. They were nearly black with soot and charcoal and, here and there, reddened with burns. He never seemed to mind the wounds he took when working.

  "Just an accident," Thomas said. "We are banking the fire for the night. We will be leaving now." When Diwell finally put his weapon away, Thomas raked coals forward and added a layer of new ones behind, then a single drop of green liquid. The fire blazed up with a hiss, then subsided. Burning hot but steady.

  The glass would slowly, surely melt overnight and be ready for the morning.

  "Hurry up," Diwell growled near the door. "I've missed my meal because of you."

  He was out the door and locking it behind them, and as he fiddled with the padlock it allowed Jess and Thomas to stride on ahead a bit. Jess said, "Do you think this is going to work?" He didn't mean the press they were building; he knew that would.

  Thomas met his gaze squarely and said, "The Ray of Apollo? God preserve us if it doesn't. Did you get the power source?"

  "As it happens, yes." Jess reached into his trouser pocket, took out a small wooden box, and watched as Thomas slid it open. Inside, a little mechanical bird turned its head, hopped to its metal feet, and began to sing in a clear, warbling tone. Thomas reached down and touched a particular spot on the tail feathers, and the bird froze in midsong. Disabled. "Morgan won't be happy you're destroying it. She treasures it, you know. She carried it with her into the Iron Tower, and out again. Khalila got it from the bag in Beck's office. Which, by the way, reminds me: I should look into wearing full skirts. Seems like they hide a wealth of tricky behavior."

  "I'd be delighted to see you try."

  "I'll bet Dario would be."

  "So now we have our power source," Thomas said, and closed the box. He slipped it into his vest. "We make our mirrors. And then, we will nearly be ready."

  Jess didn't share the optimism. He knew it was in Thomas's nature; he knew Thomas needed it right now to see his way through the nights spent in a room with bars, in a city that was a trap. But he couldn't share it.

  In his experience, optimism got people killed.

  One of Khalila's requests had been put in place by the time they were back in the prison; she'd asked for privacy walls, and Beck--probably as a bitter little joke--had ordered pieces of paper glued across the bars of their cells. The paper, Jess immediately recognized, had been torn from Blanks. A little sting in the tail of his gift. But it was a little better, Jess had to admit. More of a sense of safety, even if it was an illusion.

  It put a tiny scar on Jess's heart when he saw Dario, of all people, escort Morgan into the prison that evening and extravagantly bow her into her private cell. The two of them were spending days together in a comfortable sitting room in Willinger Beck's office, where the most dangerous thing either would do was to collect a paper cut. He also knew that it gave Dario time to talk with Morgan, to propose to her the same thing he'd discussed with Jess: deception.

  He just hoped that Dario wasn't playing him false, along with everyone else. And he hoped that if Dario was, Morgan would refuse to go along with it.

  But he didn't know. He'd lost that ability, in the hot glare of jealousy that he wasn't the one walking with her, smiling at her.

  Dario said something to her, and she laughed and shook her head. It was a free sort of sound, that laugh, which was strange because they were anything but free here in Philadelphia. Then again, Morgan's talent, her mind, and her body had all been the Library's property. By contrast, this might seem like real freedom to her.

  Morgan's gaze skimmed across and snagged on Jess's, and he saw the laughter die away. Don't stop laughing, he wanted to tell her. I like it when you laugh. I just wish it was me.

  But the smile that melted onto her lips was better, richer, deeper. It meant more, because it was meant only for him. And unlike the laughter, it lingered.

  She held out her hand to him, and it felt right to take it. Just for a moment. She looked down at their twined hands and winced as she noticed his fingers. "What have you been doing? Your hands--"

  "Glass cuts," he said. "Look, not even bleeding anymore. I'm fine. How--" He wanted to ask, How are you? because he was worried by the dark shadows beneath her eyes, the slight tremble in her hands. But he said, "How is Santi?"

  "I haven't been there, but we're told he's better," she said. "Scholar Wolfe sent me away once he was moved to the doctor's house. Beck demanded me at city hall."

  "Why?" Jess asked.

  "He wanted me to reactivate the Translation Chamber. They'd walled it up over a hundred years ago, the day they took the city. The floor was covered in giant spikes. If we'd entered there, when we left London--" Jess winced, imagining them dropping into such a place . . . sealed, and full of deadly traps. When the Burners had kidnapped them and forced her to make the journey, she'd chosen the park outside city hall; it had been the largest space, the easiest to find. "He wanted it functioning, for use with his smugglers."

  Jess lowered his voice. "Could you do it?" Because that might be exactly what they needed. But she shook her head.

  "No chance. Translation Chambers work because they're places rich in quintessence--and they're rich because they're used, over and over. Because people pour energy out inside them. But a hundred years of disuse has stripped it bare. There's nothing left. I'm sorry, Jess." She'd been thinking the same, that she could lie to Beck and hold that escape route in reserve. But if it was dead, that left only the smugglers' tunnel and the desperate, last-ditch idea of the Ray of Apollo. Jess didn't much like the chances of either one.

  Khalila came in soon after, with Glain, and she beamed when she saw Jess and Thomas. "It makes me glad to see you both at the end of the day," she said. "Sweaty and dirty as you are. I think we all worry, having you apart from us." Her smile slipped away, and she washed her hands and face in the cold-water bucket by the door. "If only Santi and Wolfe were here to meet us, too." She'd found time, Jess saw, to change to a clean dress--unbleached linen, something that Dario had found for her, no doubt. Neat, as always. "I'm not sure I trust the work of this provincial Medica . . ."

  "I think the doctor is doing his best," Morgan said. Jess moved past them to plunge his hands into the cold wat
er and used the sand provided next to it to scrub the charcoal from his skin. The cuts, he had to admit, looked bad. And they stung. "And the captain is strong. A few days of rest will let him heal."

  "If he doesn't take another turn for the worse," Dario said. When they all glared at him, he held his hands up. "We were all thinking it."

  "I wasn't," Glain said, and shoved past him. "And I'm not. The captain's going to be fine."

  "What if he isn't?" Thomas asked. The question fell into a sudden, and very dark, silence. "What happens to Wolfe?"

  "We look out for him," Khalila said. "As he'd do for any one of us. But Captain Santi will be fine. That might be only my love of him speaking, but it's what I must believe."

  She'd be the only one to admit it, but they all loved the captain, Jess thought; Santi brought out all the best parts of Wolfe. Without him . . . Jess could only think of the term Beck had used. Stormcrow. Without Santi, Wolfe would be more that than ever.

  They were all silent for a moment. Not even Dario found anything stupid or inconsequential to say. Jess, without thinking about it, put his arm around Morgan, and she leaned against him, a lovely burst of warmth.

  "Progress?" Jess asked quietly, and Khalila seemed relieved to have something else to think about.

  "Find me a pen and paper," she said. "I took time in Beck's office today to study a city map."

  "What map? You never moved from your chair!" Glain said. "I sat across from you the whole time, and it was easily the most boring day of my life!"

  Khalila slowly smiled at her. "The map was hidden in plain sight," she said. "Framed. On the wall above your head."

  Glain froze, thinking back, and Jess saw the exact moment she remembered. She looked well kicked, but Jess didn't blame her at all. He'd been in that office. He didn't remember a map, either.