Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(47)

“We were thinking about Thomas!” Jess shouted back. “The longer we hide from this, the more he’ll be hurt! Broken! You—of all people, you know that!”

Santi looked at Wolfe with a stilled expression. His long fingers curled too tightly around the edge of the table, and then he nodded. “I know, too,” he said. “I was there when Wolfe crawled bloody to this door. I’m the one who saw what was done to him. And we are not taking this risk blindly.”

“That’s the point, sir. That’s why I’m here. We’re all going to die if we don’t take action now. We need to get Thomas and get out!”

“Not without more definitive information.”

Jess swallowed, and said, “I think part of that answer is locked up in your memories, Scholar. You were taken, just like Thomas. You were even taken for the same reasons. Maybe they took you to the same place.” He spread his hands. “We’ve tried everything else.”

“No,” Santi said.

Wolfe ignored that. “There’s no guarantee that anything I recall will help,” he said. “Still less will it be real proof that’s where they’re holding Thomas.”

“It’s more than what we’ve got right now, isn’t it?”

Wolfe looked at him for a moment without any expression, and then shook his head. “I can’t recall any useful details. What they did to me was very effective.”

“Leave it, Jess,” Santi said. “I’m sorry, but this has gone far enough. I have to look after Christopher’s safety now.”

“There is no safety—you said so yourself.”

“I told you, leave it alone. This isn’t some adventure; it’s a bloody war. They pay me to be a tactician, and I can tell you this: we can’t win. We don’t have the numbers or the weapons or the knowledge. We’re defeated before we start, and, yes, I will look after the one I love before all else, and devil take the rest of you if it comes to that!”

Wolfe didn’t seem to hear any of that as he paced, but suddenly he said, “Brightwell. Can you secure a Mesmer who knows his business and can be trusted?”

Mesmers weren’t common in Alexandria, but there were a few, and some who plied a trade more in the shadows than in the light. The entertainers—the ones who made volunteers dance like chickens or pretend to fly—those had been certified by the Library. There were others whose motives were more purely profit driven. “I think so,” Jess said.

Santi said, “No. Under no circumstances will I allow it.”

Wolfe said, in the same mild tone, “Ignore that. He doesn’t want me to remember more, of course. He thinks I’ll shatter like a dropped vase if I do.”

“Will you?” Jess asked.

“Yes!” Santi said, and it was a shout compressed beneath an artificial calm. “He’ll destroy himself. And you’ve got a target on your back, Jess. Don’t forget it.”

Jess shrugged. “I grew up with the Garda chewing at my heels. Business as usual.”

“The Archivist’s assassins aren’t bound by the same laws as the London Garda or even my own soldiers. You should be afraid. He’s killed far better than you.”

“Stop, Nic. Jess is right.” Wolfe stopped pacing and looked at Santi. The two men faced each other, and Wolfe seemed quiet, clear-eyed, and steady. He didn’t look like the fragile, shaking man Jess had seen at the High Garda compound after the ambush. Nor did he look like the driven, angry man who’d taken on the role of teacher for Jess’s class. The man had too many secrets, buried too deep, for Jess’s comfort. Ironic, some sliver of Jess’s mind whispered, considering how much you keep from him. From everyone.

They were alike, Jess realized: both mistrustful, prone to hide emotions from others. Both with scars they hated to show. The difference was that Wolfe had Niccolo Santi. They’d braided their lives tightly together, and it would take a sharp sword to cut that tie.

He envied them that love. He might have hoped for it once.

But she was gone.

“Don’t do this,” Santi said. “I’m begging you, Chris, don’t. You’ll kill yourself.”

“Better I kill myself in a good cause than let the Library simply erase me. The Archivist has already destroyed my work. We both know he won’t allow me to live on much longer. If dying is my fate, at least I can try to change Thomas Schreiber’s before it comes.” He reached out for Santi’s hand. “I will happily remember every cut, every burn, every blow if it helps set that boy free. Please don’t stand in my way.”

Santi bowed his head for a moment, stepped forward, and rested his forehead against Wolfe’s. “You fool,” he said, and kissed him, sweet and slow. “Don’t ask me to watch you tear yourself to pieces.”

He let go of Wolfe, went into the bedroom, and closed the door behind him.

Wolfe said, “I can’t blame him for that; he remembers how I was after. But I’m stronger now. I will manage.”

“Sir—” Jess’s voice went cold in his throat, and he couldn’t finish for a long, struggling moment. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” The look in his dark eyes was chilling now, lightless, the same as when he’d been the unwilling proctor for their class of innocent postulants, knowing so many would fail or die. “I’m not your hero. It was my doing that made you all targets in the first place. If you’d never met me, your life would have been happier. It surely would be longer.” His smile was awful—full of bitterness and heartbreak. “Now go find me a suitable Mesmer, and let’s get this over with before Nic comes to his senses.”