Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(33)
Somewhere in the bushes, Jess heard a rustle. He turned his head toward the noise, and saw that another sphinx watched them through the hedge. The human-shaped face stared with eerie concentration, and the eyes burned bloody red.
Jess forced Dario’s arm down. “Inside. Get inside.”
“No, he’s right there—”
“Follow me. Now!”
Jess turned and launched into a run back toward the tomb’s entrance. He heard the crack of breaking branches and didn’t look back. Dario was just a step behind, and caught up as the sphinx let out a sound like the high shriek of a hawk. It was coming for them. Jess put on a burst of speed, digging into his strides and lengthening them, and within four long steps he was past the hedges, and in another ten, halfway around the tomb building, with Dario struggling to keep pace. Screams rose as the pursuing sphinx rounded the corner at a lion’s lope, and people who’d been casually enjoying the park dove out of its path and ran for the exits. Jess tried not to think about the damage it could do to innocent bystanders. He’d seen the raw, red destruction left by automaton lions in London. He and Dario were risking not just their own lives, but those of everyone caught in this place.
Jess and Dario darted up the marble steps. “Why are they chasing us?” Dario demanded, gasping for breath. Jess hadn’t even felt the run. Dario needed to get out from behind his desk more. “We’re Library! We’re wearing the bands! What in the name of God—”
“They already knew! Your contact sold us out. Or someone sold him out,” Jess shot back. “Did you think you could just stroll over and get handed something the Library kills people for? With no experience and no training, in a public place? Idiot!”
Dario was utterly out of his element, all his composure shaken. For all that he’d survived Oxford and the disasters that came after, he’d never, until this moment, truly seen the Library as his enemy. He’d never understood what it meant to come face-to-face with its dark side. Jess almost envied him that. And almost pitied him.
But there wasn’t time for either.
He’d never been inside this tomb before, but Jess knew the first level was a kind of museum, showing artifacts from Alexander’s time—his armor, his sword, and more. With any luck, the sphinx’s instructions wouldn’t allow it to enter these precincts, where it could damage and destroy priceless history. But in case that wasn’t true, Jess led Dario up another, interior set of stairs, two at a time, to a shadowy landing. His heart was pumping, but not completely in fear; there was a kind of exhilaration to this that was addictive. A deadly game. But still a game.
Outside, the sphinx shrieked again. The other answered, and somewhere mingled with it was the bone-shattering scream of a human being in mortal pain and distress—a scream that cut off abruptly.
Dario’s eyes were wild as he said, “Did they—”
“Kill your contact? Probably. Or some innocent who got in the way.” Jess wanted to punch him for his deadly ignorance. “What did you think you were playing at, Dario? Were you trying to impress me?”
Dario swallowed hard, opened his mouth, then closed it. “Maybe I was.” Some awareness crept back into his expression, and he looked around. “I’ve never been in here. Have you?”
“No.” Another idiocy, Jess thought; Dario should have scouted this place thoroughly, on many occasions, at different times of day. He should have known how to get in, out, every possible route of escape. “Come on. We’re going up.”
The next level held the glass coffin of Alexander, and though he knew he shouldn’t, Jess found his steps slowing. There was a sense of terrible reverence here. Alexander’s withered, leathery body—embalmed and dressed in a set of gilded armor—lay under thick, ancient glass . . . or crystal, maybe. The body was smaller than Jess would have guessed. Alexander had conquered most of the known world as little more than a boy, and Jess wondered what he’d have thought of all this—of the tomb, the honors, the Library that had conquered the rest of the world in his name. Had he really wanted to be displayed like this, as his own museum piece?
Surrounding the coffin, inset in alcoves in the walls, stood statues of weeping men and women, their hands covering their faces. Lifelike and frightening.
Dario’s voice came hushed, but it still made Jess flinch. “Are those . . .”
“Automata? Yes. Don’t touch the coffin. They’re probably guardians.”
Jess stayed well away from Alexander’s corpse and took the next set of stairs up again, with Dario at his heels. They emerged into a large, empty veranda open to night breezes, furnished with stone benches and seats. It afforded a fine view of the sights of Alexandria, but no way up to the small roof or out. When Jess looked down on the gardens below, it didn’t surprise him to see that all casual visitors had vanished into the night. It was just him, Dario, and two pacing sphinxes below, staring up with intense red eyes. Terrible odds.
“Where are we going to go?” Dario asked. He sounded justifiably worried.
“Go down,” Jess said.
“The sphinxes—”
Jess took in a deep breath. “You go this way. I’ll draw the sphinxes to the other side of the building. Stay here and watch. When it’s clear, climb down.”
“Excuse me—climb down?”