Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(55)
The words stayed for a moment and then faded away. The page was blank.
The page stayed blank.
“Put that away,” the man across from him said. “No messages on missions.”
Jess should have known that. He nodded and put the Codex away, and tried to hope that being sent to Rome was just some lucky, happy coincidence.
He was too cynical to believe it for long.
“On your feet!”
Jess hadn’t realized he’d slept until the squad leader’s shout roared over him, amplified by the very suddenness of it; he jerked awake and was up fast enough that he banged his head on the low ceiling of the carrier. It had stopped moving, though he could feel the faint vibration of the steam engine still working. The impact was hard enough to make his vision spark, and the pain radiated through the top of his head like an acid bath, but he grimly stumbled out after Glain, into what proved to be a heavily walled courtyard large enough to hold all the vehicles and the soldiers disembarking from them, but only just. Overhead, the sky had turned a teal that told him twilight was approaching, the day well gone. He’d slept a long time. He supposed he’d needed it, but he’d missed meals and—most important now—a latrine.
Wherever they were, it wasn’t Rome, but it also didn’t feel like Alexandria. On the smooth surface of the courtyard there were drifts of fine dirt that crunched under his boots as he turned to see the soaring structure of a pyramid-shaped building. A Serapeum, a daughter branch of the Library. This one was made of searingly white stone, with a slice of gold at the top that he realized, on squinting, was a spire holding up the Library’s seal. The shadows drowning half the courtyard seemed deeper than usual.
He formed up with the squad, and the Blue Dog squad leader—he still didn’t know the young man’s name—moved quickly down the line to inspect them. He was shorter than Jess but radiated a commanding presence that made Jess straighten just a bit more.
“Where are we, sir?” That was Glain, surprisingly.
Even more surprisingly, the squad leader seemed willing to answer. “We’re at the port city of Darnah. Ships are waiting to take most of the company, but we lucky few will be going on with the captain directly.”
“Directly,” Glain said. “You mean by Translation.”
The squad leader grinned, dispelling all his years and authority in one flash of teeth . . . and then getting it back in the next instant as he said, “Exactly what I mean. Move. Consider this an honor. We’re in the advance guard of the Artifex Magnus today.”
The arrogant old man was making Niccolo Santi guard him. It was a deliberate insult; there was no doubt of that. The Artifex had been the one to take Wolfe to prison and oversee his . . . conversion, just as he’d taken Thomas. It had to be a constant struggle for Santi not to shoot the bastard in the back.
If Santi can stand it, I can, Jess told himself. He tightened the straps on his pack and followed Glain down the wide tunnel that ran at a slant beneath the Serapeum.
No doubt parts of this vast pyramid were devoted to spacious, beautiful areas where the public could browse the Codex and load up Blanks with texts; librarians would be working, serene and helpful. A Scholar or two might be conducting his own research in a secret archive of local documents. There would be reading spaces, light, and beautiful views from the windows. That would be the public face of the Library, the one that even Jess had always known.
That was not the Library he saw here in the tunnels. As the majority of Santi’s troops continued down the stone-walled hall beneath the pyramid and headed for the docks, Santi led them off to the right, down a narrower passage lit by flickering glows above. The glows were chemical, an older style, and sputtered unsteadily with a greenish cast to them. It made all the faces of Jess’s companions seem eerily lifeless.
Not a thing to think about before Translation. The last time he’d been through this, he’d seen a classmate die and one broken by it. But he’d survived it once, and knew he could again. I am a soldier now, he told himself. Soldiers take risks.
The group accompanying Santi consisted of the green-eyed lieutenant whom he’d sent to intimidate Jess, their squad, and another, more seasoned group of veterans who seemed totally at ease with the situation. One of them, a man who seemed ancient to Jess but was in reality about his father’s age, caught sight of Jess’s face and laughed. “Don’t worry, boy, you’ll come through in one piece,” the soldier said, and shoved him ahead through an open set of double doors. “Might not enjoy the trip, but at least we travel in style here. Seen a lot worse!”
The old soldier was right. This was far different from the Translation Chambers Jess had seen in Alexandria and in their last arrival point in England. The one in Alexandria had seemed chaotically full of machinery, steam, pipes, gears, sparks. It had felt at once ancient, untidy, and unfinished. Maybe it had been under repair.
The one in England had seemed bare and grubby. He’d have expected Alexandria to have the best of everything, but as he stepped into this Translation room in Darnah, he was struck by how sleek it was. The floor was bare stone, cool beneath his boots. The ceiling stretched high, and what machinery was visible was only glimpsed behind barriers or rafters above. A single bronzed cable dropped down from the unseen machinery to hang down in a circle of light, in which lay a curved, reclining chair made of the same stone as the floor, with a metal helmet next to it.