Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(109)
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounds like a harsh kind of love.”
It was a perfect description for his childhood. He’d not known anything else until he’d come here to Alexandria, and now he could look back on it and see how dry and arid it was.
But useful nevertheless. I might be just as bad, he thought. I can’t see my brother and father as anything but tools to be used. I should be better than that. He’d not even spared a moment to think about his mother—not that he wasn’t fond of her in the abstract, but she’d never been present for him. Would she have cried over his death? Probably. But he had the awful feeling that it would have just been for herself and not for him.
“Don’t,” Morgan said. She turned toward him and put her hand on his chin to turn his face toward her. “Don’t go into your head and leave me. I’m just as frightened as you are, you know.”
“You? The girl who defies the Iron Tower and wins? I doubt you understand what fear means to the rest of us.” He removed her hand from his chin, but only to raise it to his lips. He kissed the soft skin while looking into her eyes and saw her shiver. Felt her skin rise in chill bumps under his touch. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
He pointed to the Codex. “For reminding me there’s more to life than what I grew up knowing.”
Wolfe, Khalila, and Thomas were still arguing. Morgan sighed and tilted her head in their direction. “I suppose—”
“That we should help? Yes. We’ll be out of time soon.”
Morgan proved to be a calming influence, and Jess interrupted arguments when it became clear both sides had points, and within another hour, they’d scraped together a good deal more than a hundred volumes. Too many to carry. Jess and Santi took charge of weighing the bags and removing what couldn’t be taken, though every one they abandoned put a cut on Jess’s heart. It’s all right, he thought. Maybe we can come back later for more. She’ll help us. She’d said she couldn’t, but Jess was seeing quite a bit of Wolfe in his mother’s character, including the steel-hard stubbornness.
Keria Morning hadn’t survived all these years as an enemy of the Archivist by giving up, giving in.
The Codex that Morgan carried must have changed, because she quickly drew it out and opened it. Then she frowned.
“Is it from my father?” Jess asked.
“No,” she said, and went to the Obscurist. She showed her the entry. “It’s from Gregory, to you.”
The Obscurist read the message, closed the book, and nodded. “We’re out of time,” she told him. “The Archivist’s guards have entered the Tower. Gregory let them in, and I’m being ordered to surrender you all immediately. You must Translate to London. Now.”
“My father’s not sent back a reply yet,” Jess said. “Until we know it’s safe—”
“It won’t be safe here,” she interrupted him. “They’re coming. Now.”
Silence settled in with grim weight, and Santi said, “Then we go.” It sounded like a death sentence. Jess swallowed hard.
Thomas silently took Glain’s pack and added it to his own. She didn’t say she was grateful, but Jess could see she was. Her leg was still painful and no doubt would slow her down in a running battle, but she bore the pain stoically. He expected nothing less. Glain would always do her best, until her best wasn’t good enough.
Jess found himself missing Dario; the Spaniard’s sharp humor would have been a nice addition just now. Khalila was steady and calm and as cheerful as she could be, but there was no doubt she understood this was a one-way step into total darkness. What they’d find on the other side . . . none of them truly knew. Jess certainly didn’t.
The Obscurist stopped at the iron door and said, “Morgan. I can do one last service for you, at least.”
Morgan flinched as Keria reached out and brushed her fingertips in a line across the gold collar circling her throat.
It unlocked with a sudden, dry snap.
Morgan gasped and reached up to pull it off. Once she had, she stared at it as if she had no conception of what it was, until suddenly she let it fall to the floor with a heavy thud. The skin beneath was pale and moist. She didn’t seem to know what to say, but finally she whispered, “Thank you.”
Wolfe’s mother nodded. She seemed very calm. Very . . . resigned. “They would be able to track you through it if you’d kept it on. Morgan, I’ll leave it to you to remove any tracking scripts that they try to link to the Library bracelets the others wear. It might help to leave them on for now. People hesitate to kill librarians.” She hesitated and closed her eyes. “I’ve failed you in many things, Christopher. I won’t fail you in this. You must trust me now.”
It was a leap Jess thought might be impossible for Wolfe, but he stared at her for a long moment and then crossed to her. He took her hand in his. “I do,” he said.
“I don’t deserve that, do I?” Her smile was broken and beautiful and very real. “A mother should always protect her child. And I haven’t.”
He stood for a moment holding her hand, and then suddenly pulled her forward into an embrace. It was fierce and fast, and then he turned away, head down. The Obscurist blinked away tears, took a breath, and said, “It’s time to go.”