Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(82)
“I think I’ve found the container for the script,” Jess said. He reached in, and Thomas’s hand flashed out to grab his arm and hold it back.
“Don’t. It would kill you,” he said. “Glaudino would never touch it himself. Only Obscurists can open those containers. Work around it for now, and loosen the clamps. Be careful.”
Jess nodded. He didn’t like the idea of working near something that might kill him with a touch, but he liked the idea of Thomas’s unsteady hands in there even less. He worked the clamps loose until he heard the ball shift inside the flexible mesh net, and then sat back. “Morgan? I think this is your job now.”
She squeezed in beside him, and he showed her how to unfasten the clamps before moving back. She loosened the fastenings and the ball dropped into her hands, wrapped in its mesh net, which she peeled away and put aside. It looked harmless in her hands, like a shiny toy, but there was a shimmer to it that made him move well back. Morgan turned it in her fingers curiously, but she wasn’t looking for a seam—wasn’t looking at it at all, he realized—and the heat-wave shimmer on the ball suddenly leaped off the surface and into a haze around it, with shadowy shapes forming. Not letters he recognized in any language he knew, or even numbers; these were alchemical symbols and figures that only Obscurists knew. She stared at the swirling orb of symbols and slowly reached out to pluck out a few.
Jess moved closer again, but not too close, and paused when he saw her warning glance. “It looks like magic.”
“It isn’t,” she said. “Well, not exactly. Alchemy is a science, but a science that acknowledges certain principles of magic. This . . . this is a mathematical expression of quintessence, Archimedes’ fifth element, which binds all things together.”
“It’s glowing letters hanging in midair!”
She laughed a little breathlessly. “Think of it this way: alchemists of old relied on the energy provided by tides, the moon, sun, planets in alignment. Every experiment was delicate and had to be balanced just so, or there couldn’t be a proper result. Obscurists have an inborn talent to provide that energy from within and not from the world around us; we are born with quintessence. And the letters are only glowing in front of you because I’m cheating. I like to see what I’m doing.”
“And what are you doing?”
“This ball has a seal on it. It is a code of structures that must be passed through quintessence and altered, in order. This is how I read the code.”
“But—”
“Jess. Let me work! This isn’t like solving a child’s puzzle.”
He sat back, watching as her slender hands touched, spun, and changed symbols in the air. Finally, she took in a breath and said, “There. That feels right,” and pushed her hands together. The letters vanished, and she reached out to place her fingers on the ball.
The ball seemed to vibrate and then folded back with a sharp hiss. Jess expected to see a tangle of wires and cables and gears, but it was empty except for a small rolled scroll of paper.
“What is that?” Glain asked. She seemed as fascinated as Jess.
“The script,” Thomas answered. “The instructions that set the boundaries for the lion and give it the rules it must follow.”
Morgan nodded. “Exactly. What do you want the lion to do?” She reached for a pen that Glaudino had left on a stack of papers on the table.
“I want it to be our champion,” Thomas said.
It took another hour to puzzle out how to put the lion back together, but they managed. Jess was proud of his handiwork—or Thomas’s, really; he’d just donated his hands to the job. He sat back on his heels and looked at Thomas, Morgan, and Glain, and said, “Ready?”
“Ready,” Thomas said. “Let’s see if she works.”
Glain’s head suddenly turned in the direction of the outer workshop, and she took a step toward the door, then back. “Santi and the others,” she said. “They’re coming in.”
Jess nodded and reached the switch beneath the lion’s jaw just as the others crowded into the small workshop.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Wolfe asked. He sounded exhausted and, of course, irritable. He would be. They’d been a long time getting here, and no doubt there was a story to it Jess wanted to hear . . . but not now.
Wolfe was probably shocked when Thomas turned to him and shushed him, but Jess didn’t look up. He was sweating and feeling uncomfortably close to this creature now that it was no longer in pieces. “Here it goes.”
He pressed the switch and quickly backed up to stand next to Thomas and Morgan. “This will work, won’t it?” he asked Thomas. “A little reassurance would be nice. We don’t have room to run in here.”
Reassurance didn’t come from Thomas, but from the lion. The dull eyes took on a shimmer, then a baleful red shine. It turned its head to fix those unblinking eyes on Jess, and . . . made a sound low in that metallic throat that sounded almost like a purr.
Jess was used to hearing them growl, but he’d never heard that sound before. Before he could ask Thomas if that was a good sign, the lion’s head pushed forward and pressed against his chest, and the mechanical purring grew so loud, it vibrated through Jess’s body. He awkwardly patted the thing’s head. His whole body still felt tight and nervous. “Good girl,” he said. “Is it a girl?”