Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(111)

“Save us the speeches,” Wolfe said. “Kill us, if you intend to do it.”

“I will,” he said. “But first I have to do what I’ve been ordered. May all the gods damn you for it.”

He took a small leather case from a pocket of his robe and opened it.

A glass globe filled with green fluid rolled into his outstretched palm.

Jess pulled in a breath, but Wolfe was the first to understand, fully, the impossible. “No,” he said. “You can’t. You can’t.”

“I don’t want to,” the Artifex said. He was crying. Tears streamed from his reddened eyes and lost themselves in the canyons of wrinkles beneath. “But you did this, Wolfe. You.”

He threw the Greek fire into the shelves of delicate, flammable books.

Jess screamed and threw himself forward, but it was too late, too late. The glass broke, the thick greenish liquid splashed over vulnerable spines and fragile paper, over faded ink and lost dreams.

And then, with the sound of a sickening, indrawn breath, it ignited.

Jess lunged at the soldier in front of him and slammed his forehead into the man’s nose with a muscular crunch and a corresponding blackness that radiated through his skull like a ringing bell. He didn’t pause, just put his shoulder into the staggering man’s stomach and heaved up to toss the soldier off his feet.

The restraints tightened around his wrists like snakes constricting, and he felt a hideous whine inside his head. The first shelf of books was fully on fire with licks of greenish-white flame. The second above it smoked, and Jess could see paper blackening and curling at the edges.

Santi had put down a soldier, too. Glain hadn’t; she was hobbled by her bad leg and had fallen herself. Together, he and Santi rushed at the Artifex. Jess didn’t have a clue what the good of it was, but he had to do something.

They never made it, of course. Jess felt something hit him in the back and pitch him forward, off balance, and fell to the floor hard. Santi fell just a breath behind him, and before Jess could scramble back to his feet, someone was pinning him down.

Jess raised his head and watched the shelves of the first level smoke, warp, spark, and burn. Book after book.

Level after level.

When the smoke became thick and choking and Jess could no longer see for the tears streaming out of his eyes, he felt himself being pulled backward by his legs, out into the sweeter air.

The Black Archives were gone.

And now all that remained was for the Artifex to finish them off.

He was being rolled toward the steps; Santi had already been pushed down them, to roll in an awkward ball. Jess would be next. The others had already been sent down, and he saw Khalila’s stark, blank face staring up. Morgan beside her. Thomas was crouched on the floor in the open space of the garden, beside the Translation equipment they wouldn’t have a chance to use. It would take too long, even if Morgan could operate it. What remained would be a quick, ugly death for most of them, and prison inside this tower for Morgan and Wolfe’s mother. Forever.

Then he was tumbling down the steps, and tucked himself into as tight a ball as he could. He landed badly and cried out when his face hit the tiled floor. Fresh red blood dripped from cuts on his face like tears, brilliant even in the dim light. He coughed and coughed, trying to get the taste of bitter ashes out of his lungs, and between the retching spasms he realized he was still weeping for all the books he’d just seen die.

He felt fingertips brush the restraints holding him, just a quick touch, and the numbing pain of them loosed. Someone was kneeling over him. He heard the Obscurist Magnus say, in a strange and distant tone, “You’ve given me no choice, Artifex. You know that. And I am a very bad enemy.”

“Not for long.” The Artifex was a blur on the edges of Jess’s vision. He turned his head and blinked to clear his eyes. Wolfe’s mother was kneeling beside him, and under the smudge of smoke and ashes, the look in her eyes was something so terrible, he didn’t want to stare at it for long.

“You’ve killed so much of the past today,” she told him. “Generations and generations of brilliance. But you know what you’ll never kill?”

The soldiers of the Artifex were just as affected by the smoke as Jess; they were coughing, their eyes streaming and red.

So they missed seeing Thomas flex his wrists and break the restraints holding him. They missed seeing Dario, who’d been flung to his hands and knees on the tile next to Khalila—still unbound, both of them—pick up the weapon that Glain had thrown down at the edge of the open space, near the bench.

Missed seeing Morgan draw her fingers over Wolfe’s restraints and then over Santi’s. Hers were already loose.

“You will never kill our future,” Wolfe’s mother said, and as if it was a signal, as if they’d planned this, Thomas came up with a roar and lunged forward, taking down three guards at once, and Dario aimed and fired one perfect shot at the Artifex Magnus.

The Artifex fell. Dead or only wounded, Jess couldn’t tell. He ripped his wrists free and grabbed for another fallen weapon, and in seconds he was firing, too, targeting one High Garda uniform after another. It was bloody chaos, and he couldn’t see where his friends were, couldn’t see anything except Wolfe’s mother laying hands on both Wolfe and Santi and somehow, without the Translation equipment, unmaking them into a spiraling whirlwind of flesh and bone and blood. She reached Dario and Khalila, and they, too, vanished into a bloody mist. Gone.