Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(100)

Glain swallowed her mouthful and reached for the water glass. “Soup is soup. But they’ve treated me well enough.” She shot Jess a guarded look. “How is everyone else?”

“All right so far,” he said. He knew she was asking mostly about Morgan, and he didn’t want to answer that question. “So, you’re not going to die on us, then.”

“Don’t you just wish? No. You’re not so lucky, Brightwell.”

“Good.” He extended a hand and she clasped it, but quickly, and then dug back into her soup. Personal emotion always made her uncomfortable. “Thomas thought of the food.”

“It was kind,” Glain said, and gave the German boy a brief, full smile. “Did you eat?”

“Schnitzel,” Thomas said. “But I almost regret it. I— My stomach can’t take so much rich food so quickly, I think.” He’d paled again and his fingers drummed in agitation. Trying, Jess figured, to distract himself from thoughts of what he’d eaten in the cells, or the times he’d had to endure hunger. Even the good things are tainted for him, Jess thought, and it enraged him all over again. But it would get better, wouldn’t it? Given time? It hasn’t for Wolfe. Against his will, he recalled Elsinore Quest’s advice: damage like this couldn’t be buried safely.

“We should leave you,” Jess said, “unless you need something?”

“I’ll harass the staff if I do. That’s what they’re here for,” Glain replied. “You concentrate on finding a way out of this. I’ll join you tomorrow.”

“If the physicians say you can.”

“Tomorrow,” she said, and ate another mouthful of soup with grim determination.

Thomas seemed reluctant to leave despite his restlessness, and Jess had to convince him that they weren’t abandoning Glain; he seemed eager for her not to feel alone, but to Jess it appeared to be more about Thomas’s experiences shadowing the situation. Eventually, Glain persuaded him by rolling her eyes and said, “Oh, for the sake of Heron, just leave me to get some rest, Thomas! I’m fine!” And as blunt as it was, it did the job of convincing him to follow Jess out.

As they left, though, Jess caught sight of a familiar figure slipping into another private curtained-off area across the way, and put his hand on Thomas’s arm to hold him back. “Wait here for me,” he said. “I’ll just be a moment.”

“Jess?”

“One moment.”

He didn’t go into the private space, but he pulled the curtain aside, just enough to see Morgan sitting down at the bedside of another young woman. It took him a moment to recall it, but hadn’t the snide girl Rosa mentioned something about Morgan’s friend? Sybil . . . No. Sybilla.

Sybilla couldn’t have been much older than Rosa—fifteen or sixteen, best guess. She was a slip of a thing, swallowed up by blankets and pillows, wan, pale, and unconscious.

As he watched, Morgan put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, bowed her head, and began to cry. Silent, wrenching tears.

“Sir,” the Medica attendant said sharply from behind him. “Come away. Now.”

Jess jumped and turned and followed her away. “Wait,” he said. “What happened to her? The girl in the bed?”

“I can’t discuss that.”

“Wait.” Jess drew her to a stop and met her eyes. “What happened?”

She looked away all too quickly. “I told you, I can’t discuss it.” But she hadn’t pulled away, either, and after a pause whispered, “She took poison. She’s not the first.”

He kept his voice as low as hers. “Why?”

“Not everyone is happy with their fate,” she said, and then did pull away. “Or suited to it. You should go. Now.”

Jess looked back over his shoulder at the closed curtains. Morgan must not have heard; he could see her shadow against the cloth, still bent forward. Still lost in her grief and fear.

I won’t let it happen to you, he told her. Whatever you feel about me now, that doesn’t matter. I don’t ever want to see you like Sybilla.




He walked Thomas back to the safety of the others and waited on the stairs until Morgan walked out onto the landing in front of the Medica doors. She didn’t look up to where he stood; she seemed tired and lonely, and she turned and took the stairs down. Away from him. Away from the rest of them.

Jess followed quietly and at a distance.

She descended two floors and went down a hallway, and as he stepped through and into sudden, thick darkness, he felt a knife prick the skin of his throat, and he immediately froze.

Then she sighed. “Oh, Jess. Please go away.” Her voice sounded thick and unsteady, and he knew she was still crying or on the verge of it. The knife moved away, and he heard her start to turn.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. That earned another sigh, even more quiet.

“For what?”

“For not understanding. Staying away from this place should always have been your choice. Not mine.” He hesitated for a second. “Your friend. Will she live?”

“Yes,” Morgan said. “And that’s almost worse. You see, they now consider her a danger to herself, so what little freedom she did have left will be taken away. She can’t bear that. Yet she’ll have to somehow.”