Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(77)

Santi walked his lieutenant down the hall toward Jess. “I don’t want to fight my own people,” he said. “No more than you want to fight me.”

“Why are you doing this? Just tell me that.”

“Just look.”

Santi walked her into the round room filled with machines—machines built to cut, to tear, to pull, to cause suffering and anguish. There was no other use for them. The stained walls and floor told the story without any words. The smell of pain and blood and despair was louder than screams.

Zara stopped in her tracks. She stared at the room, the gruesome equipment, the floor . . . and then back at Santi. She started to speak, then shook her head.

“Christopher was here,” Santi said. “He was here. Do you understand now? This is what they don’t tell us. This is who we serve. Who those people have made us.”

“No. It’s not—” She took in a trembling breath. “Someone has to keep order,” she said. “Our hands aren’t clean, either.”

“The High Garda fights wars; we don’t torture the innocent or the guilty. This is what they made us into. I’m asking you to say you arrived too late to stop us, Zara. That’s all I’m asking.”

The woman stood very still, looking at the room, hearing the silent screams trapped here, and Jess saw tears glitter in her eyes.

Then she lifted her gun and trained it directly on Captain Santi. From where Jess stood, he couldn’t tell if she had set it for lethal force or stun, but the look in her eyes said she meant to kill. “Surrender now, and maybe the Archivist will show you mercy.”

“Mercy?” Santi’s voice was as dark as the dried blood on the walls. “Look around. Does it appear to you the Library has an abundance of that? Shoot me. You’ll have to, to stop me.”

She would, Jess realized. She wasn’t like Santi. Like Jess.

She couldn’t admit her world was a lie and everything she’d done had been in the service of something dark.

Jess fired, but he was too late. She fired at exactly the same moment his bullet hit her armor.

Zara and Santi fell at the same time.





EPHEMERA



Text of a letter from Pharaoh Ptolemy II to the Archivist Callimachus, in the time of his reign, long may his name be known


From the scribe of Pharaoh Ptolemy II, to his most excellent servant Callimachus, Archivist of the Great Library, in the twelfth year of his glorious reign:

Great King Ptolemy, Light of Egypt, has wishes to endow you with his great wisdom on the subject of the loyalty of the Great Library, this sacred endeavor, to the throne of Egypt, as has been blessed by the gods from the first rays of dawn on the eternal Nile.

It is his wisdom that always must the Library exist to cast glory upon Egypt and the pharaoh, and any thought that the Library shall be a power unto itself is a dangerous and heretical whisper that must be crushed out.

Knowledge is not a pure goal. All that you gather together shall lift the pharaoh, sacred be his duty to the gods and the people of Egypt.

So speaks he, in his great and divine wisdom.


A notation to this document from Archivist Callimachus, sent to the Scholars of the Great Library


A great decision is now upon us. Will we be nothing but a mirror for Pharaoh to gaze into, to see himself as beautiful and powerful? Or do we follow our truest calling, that of benefit for all who seek to learn, and gather up this knowledge in the name of the seekers, the scholars, the teachers, the students? Is what we do nothing but a prop for a king, or is it a lever by which we move the world?

It falls to us to decide this. It will be difficult. It will be dangerous. Pharaoh has power and strength, and if we declare ourselves independent from his power, we must defend that independence with our blood. More, we must seek that same hard course of independence from every kingdom, every philosophy, every religion that would take us as its own prop, its own polished mirror in which to gaze.

I say, let us throw the bones and see what fortune brings us. Knowledge is power, so they say.

If so, then we have more than any king.





CHAPTER ELEVEN





He’s dead, Jess thought, and felt a wave of sick horror. My fault. She’d been aiming for a killing shot, and he should have been, too. He’d tried to save her, and she’d killed Captain Santi . . .

And then Santi pulled in a long, ragged breath. He gasped for air as the flexible armor in the center of his chest smoked, damaged by the shot. But it was over the plate. It had protected him.

She must have chosen her target as carefully as Jess had.

Zara still breathed, but his own shot had knocked her completely unconscious. Wouldn’t last long. They’d have to move fast; the clock was ticking down for her soldiers as well.

Jess grabbed Santi’s arm and dragged him to the hole, yelled, “Catch him,” and slid the captain through feetfirst. Then he gritted his teeth, got on the other side of the torture device that had been blocking the hole, and shoved with all his might. It grated a few inches—enough to disguise the opening, at least for a few moments. There was just enough of a gap left for him to skin through, if he didn’t mind the scrapes.

Jess sucked in his breath and wriggled down just as he heard the other soldiers yelling for the lieutenant. He landed hard—no one caught him—and rolled right into the metal bulk of the lion still blocking the tunnel.