Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(119)

The other Burners were throwing now, too, targeting the other lions. One automaton managed to dodge the rain of bottles and landed hard on a screaming victim—man, woman, Jess couldn’t tell, and in the next instant it didn’t much matter, because the scream cut off quickly. Some of the Burners weren’t much older than him. Jess shut his eyes as the lions thrashed and roared, the bottles of Greek fire flew and broke, and another Burner yelled in fear and pain.

Then Morgan said, in an unsteady, hushed voice, “It’s over.”

He opened his eyes again to see the last of the lions had collapsed on its side. It was melting into a tangled mess, cables twisting and snapping, gears and springs deforming. The metallic roaring faded to a strange, distorted whimper, and then . . . nothing.

Four lions lay dead—did automata die?—in a shimmering pool of Greek fire, with two Burners bloody and crushed nearby. It was a terrible sight, and the street and steps scorched black from the rippling heat.

“Well,” Callum said from behind him. “That was well worth the price.”

Jess didn’t even think. He rounded on his father, fist pulled back, and as Morgan shouted his name, his brother grabbed his arm and held it while Jess shouted and struggled. “Let go! Let me go!”

“Be smarter,” Brendan said quietly. “He’ll kill you.”

“I could have—” Stopped this without people dying, he almost blurted out, but he could see Thomas’s warning stare over Brendan’s shoulder. “I could have done this differently. Burners, Brendan. Since when do we work with Burners?”

“When it’s smart to do it,” he said. “Profit, not philosophy, remember? Relax, brother. We have it under control.”

Khalila and Dario, with Thomas and Glain, moved up the Scholar Steps; they were meant to go straight to the Scholar’s Reading Room and grab as many books as they could. Each of them had their packs already loaded with originals, but Jess couldn’t tell his family that now. He didn’t trust them with that rare, precious knowledge. Or with the idea of the press. Then where will we turn? He didn’t know. He felt sick, having led his friends here, to a safety that vanished like fog under the sun.

Once inside the columned entrance, Callum Brightwell led his sons to the left, where a statue of Queen Elizabeth in battle armor stood guard. There was no obvious entrance, and Brightwell gestured impatiently for Morgan to catch up. Just beyond them, Khalila and Dario had gone into the Reading Room, and Dario had already picked up an original volume to add to a small crate. Khalila passed him another. Her hands, Jess saw, were shaking badly.

Glain and Thomas hovered at the corner, watching over them in case of trouble, but so far, the room was much too busy for them to be noticed. Black-robed Scholars hurried from one table to another, stacking books with haste that spoke of real fear, while a second set in sand-colored librarian robes brought over more crates and helped with packing. It looked like barely controlled chaos.

He froze as he saw a face he knew, one eerily familiar to him. It was a librarian named Naomi Ebele, who had not so very long ago been head of the Oxford Serapeum. She’d barely escaped with her life, along with the rest of them that day. He liked her. She was a strong, good woman, with a devout belief in what she was doing.

She’d recognize Dario and Khalila.

Just as he realized it, she did look up, and her eyes locked on Khalila and Dario and widened. She put down the crate she was packing and immediately walked in their direction.

Jess couldn’t guess what they would have done or could have, but it didn’t matter in the next moment, because Naomi never quite made it. There was a strange sound outside, like an impact on the roof overhead, and everyone looked up. Movement stopped.

Jess heard hissing and smelled the unmistakable reek, and as the first Scholar screamed it out, he realized what had happened.

Greek fire.

The Serapeum was burning.




There was no greater sin in war than to destroy a Serapeum. The Welsh would later point fingers at the Burners or claim it was a mistake; Jess knew that. The Burners would be happy to claim a victory for their side whether they actually did the job or not. But St. Paul’s was burning. He saw the first licks of fire clawing at the ceiling above the Scholars’ heads.

“Save the books!” Naomi Ebele shouted, and began slapping Translation tags on the boxes. She touched one and activated it, and the script buried inside it—like the scripts inside the lion, Jess realized now—drained a little energy from her to activate itself and dissolve the crate of the books, to reform in the Archives in Alexandria. Safe.

Khalila looked at Dario, face gone far too pale, and reached for one of the tags that Naomi held out. Around the room, Scholars were dumping books into crates, attaching Translation tags, and hurrying them to safety.

Dario took a handful of tags from the table and began attaching them to boxes. Khalila put one on the box that they’d already filled.

“The devil is she doing?” Brightwell asked, and started to move for a better angle. Wolfe’s hand held him back.

“She’s doing her work,” he said. “Not yours. Leave her alone.”

Dario attached tags and sent five before he staggered with the familiar weakness Jess remembered so well. Khalila managed four before she had to stop. It was enough. There were only a few boxes left now, and other Scholars were sending the last.