Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(17)

“I don’t think so,” Wolfe said. He put his hand on the young woman’s forehead and held it there for a moment—Not medically useful; just comfort, Jess thought. The action of a kind man, though Wolfe wouldn’t like being thought of in that way. He went out of his way to be seen as a hard, uncaring bastard. “I’ve seen this stuff revive those worse off.”

How often? Jess wanted to ask, but didn’t. He didn’t want to know. Instead he turned back to Glain, who was still aiming her weapon squarely at Botha. Botha was watching her with a smile, but had dead-serious eyes above the upturned lips. “I’m going to check the others,” Jess said, and stepped through the broken window with a crush of glass under his boot. “Centurion, come with me. She probably won’t shoot you in the back.”

“Probably,” Glain agreed, deadpan. She didn’t relax her vigilance until he’d led the centurion away to Tariq.

Botha rolled the younger man over and checked his pulse. He sat back and shook his head. “He’s gone,” he said. It staggered Jess, but he steadied himself quickly. Tariq was aiming at the Scholar. I had to do it. I had to.

“They said we had half-strength rounds,” Jess said, and that got a look from the other man. A pitying one.

“This wasn’t you, recruit.” Botha rolled Tariq’s limp body over to the side, and Jess saw the red-rimmed hole in his ribs. “The shot punched straight through and came out the other side—armor-piercing. From the angle, this came from above while he was already slumped down. Definitely wasn’t you.” Botha, while he talked, kept his gaze up on the area above them. Jess looked up, too. Nothing but sky and blazing morning sun. “Decent shot from that angle. Your squad mate would have been gone in an instant, never knew what hit him. Come on. Let’s find your other lost lambs.”

Jess hoped they weren’t, like Tariq, lambs to the slaughter.

They found one inside another storefront, well concealed and unhurt; the others were grouped together in a defensive position down the street. Unlike Tariq’s, the worst wounds were bruises and cracked ribs from half-strength rounds. Tariq had been deliberately executed, Jess thought, for failing in his mission to kill Wolfe.

“What in Allah’s name happened?” That was from Zelalem, one of their squad who was taller than Botha, and cadaverously thin. “What kind of test was that?”

“Pass or fail,” Botha said. “Fall in, all of you.” The three of them groaned as they stood up from their meager cover of a fallen block, and Zelalem swayed like a reed in the wind before Jess braced him. “I said fall in, not fall over. Move it. I want all my ducklings together.”

Lambs; now ducklings. Botha must have been a farmer in a previous life. Jess thought about mentioning it, but he didn’t think the man was in a particularly joking mood. As they moved back toward the storefront, there was a storm of movement at the far end of the street, and all of them, with their weapons out, drew instinctively to the cover of doorways.

It wasn’t necessary, because the movement turned out to be Captain Niccolo Santi, leading a half century of his troops down the street, all at high alert.

The centurion stepped out to flag Santi. “All clear here, sir,” Botha shouted. “Coming out!”

He gestured to the rest of them, and Jess fell in as they jogged their way to the main force. Glain stepped out of the wrecked window with an arm around Helva to prop her up, while Wolfe took the other side.

Niccolo Santi held up a closed fist to halt the advance of the troops, and the look he gave Wolfe was long and unreadable. “Scholar,” he said. “Any damage?”

“Not to me,” Wolfe said. “This one needs Medica. Cobra bite. We’ve given her antivenin.”

Santi gestured, and two of his command stepped out of formation and rushed to take Helva. Some of the pressure in Jess’s chest lifted. She’ll be all right.

Jess expected a barrage of questions from Santi, at the very least, or an outpouring of concern for Wolfe’s safety.

So it came as something of a shock when Niccolo Santi, longtime partner and lover to Scholar Christopher Wolfe, turned to Botha and said, “Put Scholar Wolfe in restraints. He’s under arrest.”

The strangest thing of all was that Wolfe didn’t seem at all surprised.





EPHEMERA



From the personal journal of Scholar Christopher Wolfe (interdicted to Black Archives)


There are mornings when I wake and I am back in the cell, and I see nothing but the dark. Feel nothing but the pain. On those mornings, I am convinced I never escaped that place, and the life I have had since never existed at all, except as a fantastic illusion.

I should leave you, Nic. I know that, because I’m not really here at all. I should vanish and never come back, because one day either I will break and fail you or I will make you break your own vows to the Library to save me from myself.

But I can’t. Leaving you would destroy everything in me that remains true and good. Leaving you means giving up on a better world.

I’m sorry, Nic. I love you more than you can ever understand. I wish I could be strong enough to protect you from my own stupidity.





CHAPTER FOUR





Jess got no answers all the way back to the barracks, where he was put in a waiting room with the rest of the squad. They were all exhausted and confused, drenched with rank sweat, and though they were allowed to strip away their armor and were given food and water, the bare room offered no other comforts but wooden chairs. They had a watchful guard who, when Jess posed a question to Glain, snapped, “Quiet. No talking.”