Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(34)

“Swing over the edge, grab hold of a statue, shinny down to the next level. Repeat. You can make it.” It never occurred to him that it might be terrifying; he’d grown up seeing that kind of activity as normal. From the look that Dario shot him, clearly he didn’t share that idea. “Do you want to try to outrun the sphinxes instead?”

Dario silently shook his head and moved to the edge. “Are you sure none of these statues I’m supposed to grab onto are automata?”

“I can’t guarantee it,” Jess admitted. “Best of luck.”

Dario glared. Jess didn’t really blame him. “Go with God,” Dario said. “And also to the devil, scrubber, for making me do this.”

“I’ll take whichever of them will make me faster,” Jess said. “Give me two minutes to lead them off. Good luck. I mean it.”

Dario nodded and offered his hand. They shook, and Jess backed up and ran down the steps they’d ascended. The sphinxes would be expecting him to emerge from the tomb’s only door. He wouldn’t want to disappoint them, but he did want a good head start, so he stopped a floor up, in the area lined with glass cases, and eased between them to reach the statues beyond. This was the layer with rearing horses and warriors, and, luckily, they all were stone, or he’d have been dead in seconds. The sphinxes hadn’t seen him yet and were crouched at the tomb doorway.

It would be a long jump and hard fall, but he’d had worse. Jess took in four lung-expanding breaths, then launched himself forward into a flat dive. He had a terrifyingly good view of the sphinxes’ twitching tails as he sailed over them, but he’d done it well enough; the dive carried him to a landing point several feet behind them, and he curled into a ball before impact, rolled up, and was digging feet into the gravel and running before the sphinxes even knew he’d arrived.

It didn’t last more than a couple of fast heartbeats. He heard the twin shrieks of the automata, and didn’t need to look back to know they’d risen to join the chase.

Go, Dario. Get out. That was the only good wish he could spare for his friend, because he had to concentrate on angling his body just right to take advantage of the footing, the breeze at his back, the way his feet rose and fell. He needed every possible fraction of a second to live through this . . . And then he saw the corpse lying ahead of him in the path. It was the body of the man they’d been set to meet—a sailor fresh from a boat, or so Dario had said. Didn’t matter now; he was just a sad heap of meat and crushed bones, but lying next to him was a leather drawstring bag.

Don’t risk it, Jess thought. You don’t have the time.

But it was impossible to resist the impulse. He veered close to the body and reached down just enough to snag his fingers in the bag’s strings. He lost a half second and could feel the sphinxes gaining on him. I won’t make it, he thought, and had a vision of himself crushed on the ground like that nameless sailor.

The bag he’d grabbed was unexpectedly heavy and it would slow him down. The knowledge—if there was any to be had from whatever was inside it—wouldn’t help him if the sphinxes caught him, but it might give him an advantage if he used it right.

Jess turned and threw the bag as far as he could the way he’d come, into the park. The twist of his body gave him a heart-stopping view of the sphinxes loping just a body’s length behind him, and then he was facing forward again and running with real desperation, breath pumping faster and faster as he spotted the park exit ahead.

One of the sphinxes peeled off and chased the thrown bag; he saw the flash out of the corner of his eye.

But one stayed on him.

There was nothing to do but pray that once he’d passed the boundary of the tomb’s precincts, the sphinx would let him go. They were made to be territorial, after all. Not even the Library wanted the monsters tearing through crowded streets in pursuit.

He could feel the sphinx gaining behind him and realized, with a sudden horror, that all his best speed, his finest running, wouldn’t put him through the exit before it reached him.

He was going to be caught.

So Jess did the only thing he could. He threw himself flat and hoped momentum would force the thing to miss him.

He was lucky rather than good—the sphinx had just leaped as he flung himself down, and as he curled into a protective ball, the back feet crashed down on gravel just a handbreadth away from his head. He could see cables flexing under the metallic flank of the thing and scrambled up, hoping to be away before it could adjust and turn.

He slipped. The loose gravel betrayed him, and before he could recover he was on his knees and the sphinx had turned to him. It padded toward him. Unhurried. Remorseless. The human face held no expression at all. The sinuous copper skin seemed to stretch and mold to the simulated muscles beneath as it moved, and Jess thought, Do something, but there was nothing he could do.

He held still, hardly daring to breathe. The human-faced head of it was on a level with his eyes, and utterly, unsettlingly alien, and he was reminded of the cobra, swaying in the darkness as it considered biting.

The sphinx parted thin metal lips and revealed razor-sharp teeth behind—the teeth of a lion in a man’s face. Deadly sharp.

Don’t. Move.

He felt a whisper of air as it drew in a bellows of breath, and he realized he was doubly dead now—he was wearing the smuggling harness with not one but two illegal books inside. The harness’s coatings should have masked the smell of bindings and papers, but if the Archivist wanted him dead, this creature needed no further excuse.