Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(114)
Then it blew away in a hiss of hot droplets on the wind, and all that was left was a spray of water on the street where it had fallen.
Jess looked up at Dario, and for just a moment, he wasn’t angry anymore. Maybe that would come again later. Didn’t matter.
He nodded. Dario returned it and walked away.
Santi crouched next to Jess. “Can you breathe?”
“Yes,” Jess said. It hurt a little, but he didn’t think it was as bad as he’d feared. His skin was tender from the steam, but no worse than an Alexandrian sunburn. “I’m all right, sir.”
“Good.” Santi leaned back on his heels and looked around. “Where are we?” The day was cloudy, a typical enough London day, and the gray pall made everything look dim and ancient. Jess had no trouble placing the outlines of buildings and the expanse of the bridge, but it seemed darker than it should. Smoky.
“London. Close to the bank of the River Thames,” Jess said. “Near Blackfriars Bridge.”
“How far to the Serapeum?”
“Walking? Not close enough.” He looked around. The bridge was some distance, but he saw it was full of people streaming across. Odd, that. There normally wasn’t such congestion in the middle of the day to cross the river. He heard the distant honking of steam-carriage horns.
Morgan took out the Codex she’d put in the pocket of her dress. The quill had survived, and she unwrapped the padded bottle of ink and quickly dipped the pen into it to scribble on the open page. “I’m telling your father where we are,” she said. “And to call off his men at the Serapeum. There’s no sense in risking them there if we aren’t coming.”
Somewhere in the distance, Jess heard the sonorous noon strikes of Big Ben. “What does he say?”
“Nothing.” Morgan chewed anxiously on her lip, and he saw the moment writing began to appear in the sudden relaxation of her posture. “Ah, there—he says go to the warehouse. You know where that is?”
“Yes.” That didn’t lessen Jess’s sense of unease, not in the least. His father kept the warehouse utterly secure, and the eight of them were walking targets. Why would he send the Library’s most wanted fugitives to his most sacred hiding spot?
He wouldn’t. Not with any good intent.
“Ask him where Liam is,” he said.
“What? Who’s Liam?”
“Just ask.”
After a pause, she read off the reply. “He says he’s at the warehouse,” she said. “Why?”
“Liam’s my older brother,” Jess said. “He’s dead. That means you’re not talking to my father anymore. And we’re not going to the warehouse.”
Jess sat in the shadows outside his family’s town house, eating a hot pie and watching the doorway. He’d been there for two hours, slouched in stinking rags with a nearly empty bottle of gin between his feet. It was cold and misty, and he now understood what the crush of traffic on Blackfriars Bridge had been about; it was all over the street corners, with urchins crying the news. The flexible sheet they sold him had constantly updating stories, war stories, written out quickly by scribes somewhere in a London office. There was a cleverly drawn illustration of soldiers in what looked to be Camden Town, judging by the street signs and shopwindows. They were carrying the Welsh dragon flag and setting fire to buildings as Londoners ran in fear. A few uniformed London Garda were being overrun near the edges of the picture. It was stylized but effective. Chaos, it seemed, had moved on from Oxford and was spreading fast. London was a vast city, but in some ways it was also curiously small, and Jess felt the prickles of unease on seeing those familiar street names and shops burning.
If the Welsh had come this far, they weren’t likely to be stopped now. Street by street, they kept up a relentless push toward Buckingham Palace, though likely the king and the rest of the royals had already sped off to safer strongholds farther north. Parliament would be just as deserted. It would be an empty victory, but an important symbolic one, for Wales.
The Library would be following standard procedure and evacuating all but essential personnel from St. Paul’s. But in the Serapeum there was a major holding spot for confiscated original manuscripts, and there were many volumes on loan there, too. Those would need evacuation. The Library would have to divert troops away from chasing them.
In some very important ways, the chaos of war was a boon to them.
So Jess slouched on the cold pavement, looking like an anonymous soul lost to drink, and watched for any sign of his father. He saw none, nor any trace of his mother or brother or even the servants. The Brightwell household was quiet and cold, though the lights were on inside, and from time to time shadows seemed to pass the windows.
After another hour, just as it slipped toward night, the front door opened and Brendan stepped out. He looked as Jess remembered him from Alexandria, but back in English clothing as finely made as what their father liked to boast, even down to the fancy silk waistcoat. He turned to survey the skyline, maybe tracking signs of fire, and then turned and stretched. He looked very tired.
Jess took off his cap and stepped forward into the light. Brendan looked around, up and down the street, then made a sharp movement for Jess to cross the street. Once he had, Brendan grabbed him and shoved him inside with such force, it almost seemed desperate. He closed and locked the town house door behind them.