Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(60)
Coming toward him. Surrounding him.
This is it, he thought. This is how I die. Somehow that felt like a fate he’d always known was coming.
The lion facing him deepened its low, rumbling growl, and he felt rather than saw the others of the pride moving in around him. He heard Glain shouting something, but she was somewhere outside the closing circle. Jess felt the hot burn of air from the lion’s nostrils as it moved forward and nudged his chest.
It wanted him to run. Of course. If he reacted, if he ran, then there’d be an excuse for the slaughter. They were on high alert during the Burner attack. Unfortunate miscalculation; if only the recruit hadn’t lost his nerve . . .
This was the Artifex’s doing, just like the Egyptian gods outside the High Commander’s office. Jess realized in a blinding flash, like a bottle of Greek fire dropping on his brain, that if he ran, it would all be over.
And the Artifex wanted him to panic.
He leaned down and stared into the lion’s savage eyes and said, “Come on, then, if you’re coming. Take a bite. But if you do, everybody will know it wasn’t an accident.”
He heard Glain’s shocked intake of breath and felt that hot, brassy stench of the lion’s insides wash over him as the creature opened its wide jaws to display bloody teeth . . . in a yawn.
It closed its mouth, stared at Jess for another long, horrible second, and then turned and padded away to stroll restlessly up and down the steps.
Guarding the building as if nothing had happened.
Jess straightened. He didn’t say anything because, in truth, he wasn’t sure he could at the moment. Better to look strong and silent than have his voice go as unsteady as his legs.
Troll stared at him as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “I don’t know if you’re mad or lucky,” he said, “but you’ve got brass guts—I’ll give you that.”
Jess nodded and took up his post. One by one the other lions broke off and went about their business. When the last left him, he finally felt a sweet, cold wave of relief.
The Artifex wanted him dead, that much was certain, but he wasn’t quite ready to make it a public execution. Not yet. He needed Jess to give him some excuse, however minor, to explain away the behavior of the automata. Today would have been a fine one, in the chaos of the Burners, and Jess knew if he’d made the wrong move, he’d be another stain to clean up on the steps tonight.
Rome is a trap. It was too neat, too convenient, that suddenly they’d been dispatched here just after finding the information about the secret prison. The Artifex must have known their plans, or at least strongly suspected them. Khalila and Dario had gone missing. Maybe already locked away.
Disposing of Glain, Jess, and Santi would just be a sensible precaution. Get rid of the fighters; keep the Scholars out of the group who—in the Artifex’s counting, maybe—could be controlled and used. It made a sickening kind of sense.
Below, Medica attendants came to claim the bodies, and a squad of firefighters put out the Greek fire blaze. People began to filter back into the Forum in ones and twos, and then suddenly it was full again, as if nothing had happened at all. Only the blackened chemical stains on the stones behind Jupiter and the bloodstains on those near Mercury showed anything at all had interrupted a normal day.
Troll stopped next to him and scanned the people below with distant, cold eyes. “Seems useless, doesn’t it?” he asked. “They put us out here, and the Burners take their shot at us, and they die.”
“It’s a waste on both sides,” Jess said. “But we can’t let them win. They want to destroy the Library.”
He knew that wasn’t strictly true; he’d been among the Burners once, had spoken to a local leader. They wanted the Library to change, just as Jess did . . . but their tactics were unacceptably violent.
Troll shifted his weight just a little. “Any idea why the lions hate you so much?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” Troll surely didn’t believe it for a moment. “You know I have to report it. Even if I didn’t, there’s another squad leader who will. They might pull you out and try to find out what about you alerts them.”
Troll seemed to be fishing for something, and Jess didn’t like it. He turned and looked at the young man directly to say, “I’m not a Burner, if you’re thinking it.” But I knew some. That was a secret the Artifex held in reserve, too. Guillaume, his classmate, had come from a Burner family; his bereaved father had taken Jess prisoner in France. If the Artifex wanted to make it seem Jess had become an agent, it would be child’s play to make that appear reasonable. “No offense, sir, but why do you care? I’m a one-day-in recruit. You should shed me and get someone else, according to any kind of logic.”
“Not that simple,” Troll said. “Believe me, I wish it were.”
He moved off, stopping to check each of his squad members like any good commander. Jess didn’t know what to make of him. Or any of this.
He was still considering the ramifications of it when he realized sometime in the chaos of the Burner attack, his Codex had received a new message.
It was gibberish. He frowned at the text, and then a second later realized he knew this code. It was his own family’s highly secure emergency code, used only for the most urgent information. He’d memorized the keys to it when he’d been just a boy.