Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(35)

The switch, he remembered from the book. He also knew that those razor-sharp teeth, and the massive lion paws with equally pointed claws, ensured that one wrong guess would absolutely be his last. Anit’s brothers had both faced this moment.

They’d both died.

Jess didn’t allow himself the luxury of doubt, because he knew that he was seconds away from death if he did nothing; the automaton’s mouth was already opening wider and the eyes burning hotter, and this chance was his only chance.

He reached under the chin of the human face and felt a small depression. As the sphinx’s head whipped sideways to bite his arm, he pressed down hard.

The head slowed its turn, but the teeth still closed around his arm.

Pressed down.

He felt the slicing sting of metal and knew it was too late—he’d lose his arm at the very least. God, no . . .

But then the sphinx just . . . stopped, with a sound of gears grinding to a halt. The jaws still pressed down, but the bite was shallow, just a little blood and pain that he made worse by having to pull himself free. Jess was panting now, shaking, pouring sweat, and as he watched the sphinx’s face, he saw the eyes flicker red, then black, and then go a dead, leaden gray.

It stood still as the statue it resembled. Frozen on the spot.

Jess heard the shriek of the other sphinx returning, and launched himself around the frozen automaton. Hedges snapped and flailed at him until he achieved gravel again, and then was running, running, with the gardens falling behind him, and the lonely, angry shriek of a sphinx chasing to the borders of the tomb’s park.

The scream followed him like a vengeful ghost as he lost himself in the streets of Alexandria.

Sweating and staggering with weariness, Jess made his way back to the port and the Lighthouse. He avoided the guardian automata by climbing the wall—another exertion he didn’t savor—and dropping down into the meditation grotto for some god or goddess lost in the dark.

He found Scholar Prakesh’s offices closed and locked. Dario hadn’t come back there, and he didn’t know where he bunked.

Khalila was in. He pounded on the door, and it opened to spill him in. He found a chair and fell into it, still breathing hard. “Dario,” he gasped out. “Is he back yet?”

“What happened?” Khalila sank down next to him to catch his eyes. “Jess! You’re bleeding!”

“It’s fine.” He brushed off her attempt to roll up the sleeve of his jacket. “Where is he?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. In his room, I suppose. You know where that is?” Jess shook his head. “I’ll take you. And you can tell me what put you in this state along the way.”

She wouldn’t take no for an answer, so Jess did tell her, and didn’t spare Dario’s folly in the telling, either. She stopped in the middle of a flight of steps to turn and stare at him. “You’re saying that you outran a sphinx?”

“No, I’m saying I couldn’t outrun a sphinx,” he corrected. “I’m lucky to be alive, and no thanks to our little Spanish prince.”

“Jess . . .” Her lips were parted, but she clearly didn’t know what to say to him. “Allah must love a fool.”

“Let’s hope that extends to Dario, too.”

She took him down four flights of stairs to what proved to be a residential floor, thickly carpeted and boasting carved doors of cedar that gave the whole hallway a rich, woody smell. She rapped on one of the doors, and it almost immediately swung open.

Dario was still alive. Injured, Jess saw, but alive. Relief flashed in his eyes when he saw Jess, but he quickly buried it. “Scrubber,” he said, and stood aside to let them come in. “Happy to see you still standing.”

“What happened to your leg?” Khalila asked, and helped Dario limp to the bed.

“I twisted my ankle falling off the damned tomb of Alexander,” Dario said. “I challenge you to find anyone else who can say that. What happened to your arm?” That last, Jess realized, was directed to him.

“Sphinx,” he said.

“You just always have to win, don’t you?” The joke was almost a reflex, because Dario stared at the blood and rips on his jacket with real concern. “Is that a bite?”

“Their teeth are like razors, in case you ever wondered,” Jess replied. “But I learned something important.”

“That I’m a fool?” Dario asked bitterly. “I’d have thought you already knew. You’ve said it often enough.”

“You’re not a fool, just a dilettante at what I’ve been doing all my life,” Jess said. “Never mind. We’re both alive. That counts.”

“Did you get the book?” Jess shook his head, and Dario’s expression set into a grim mask. “Then it was all for nothing. I got a man killed for nothing.”

“Not exactly,” Jess said. “I know how to turn off an automaton.”





EPHEMERA



Text of a coded, self-deleting Codex exchange between Morgan Hault and Jess Brightwell How could you be so stupid?


Don’t blame me. I said it was a bad idea. I’d give you two guesses whose idea it was, but you won’t need them.


I know you could have said no. You can’t take these kinds of risks! The High Garda commander nearly caught you. I saw the report. I knew it had to be you.