Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(85)
“No!” Khalila pulled away from him, from all of them, and backed toward the open door of the workshop. “No, I’m not going to leave Dario behind. Jess—” She tried to get him to look at her, but he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. “Jess!”
“The captain’s right,” Jess said, and hated himself for it. “We can’t wait. I’m sorry. He didn’t say where he was going, and we don’t even know where to start to look for him.”
“Then we try! We came back for Thomas! We can’t just abandon Dario!”
She read their faces, and then, without warning, dashed for the door. Jess had seen that coming, though, and he was faster. He wrapped her in his arms, and she fought him surprisingly hard, with sharp, precise blows that almost made him let go. Almost. He protected himself as best he could. “Stop. Stop. He’ll be all right, Khalila!” He looked to Glain for help. She folded her arms. Traitor.
“No, he won’t. You know he won’t! He’s not like you! He wants to show you that he can be just as clever, just as fast, just as . . .” She hit him again, this time a knee square to his family jewels, and he did let go. “Just as ruthless! And if you ever lay hands on me again, I will kill you, Jess Brightwell!”
“I believe you,” he gasped, and struggled not to double over. Failed. He’d done his best, and when Khalila moved to the door again, this time it was Scholar Wolfe who got in her way.
She didn’t attack Wolfe the way she had Jess. Maybe she didn’t have the stomach for it when Wolfe put his hand on her shoulder and said, in that dark, strangely gentle voice, “We’ll find him, Khalila. But not now. Now we have to look after ourselves.”
“Scholar—” Khalila’s voice was shaking. “I can’t abandon him.”
“You aren’t. He knew the risks. He wouldn’t want you to act impulsively, he’d want you to think. It’s your defining feature. Your grace. Your strength.”
She took in a slow, shaking breath, and turned away. Her face was set and terrible, her eyes like dark pits, and she met no one else’s gaze as she nodded. “Then let us run,” she said, in a voice drained of anything but anger. “Run and hide, like frightened rabbits. How does this change the world, cowering in the dark? They’ll pick us off one by one. Dario is only the first.”
“We’ll get him back,” Santi said. “Dario’s smart. He’s tough. He will survive this.”
Maybe he’ll survive because he never meant to come back. It was a sickening thought, but Jess was a practical young man. He didn’t have Khalila’s idealism, or her love-distorted view of Dario. Maybe he’s selling us out. In which case, we’d better move even faster.
There was nothing else to say. Jess pushed pain to the background. He’d need to be ready to run or fight; this was still not guaranteed escape. And if we get to the Translation Chamber, what then? Where do we go? London, he thought. It was half instinct, going home, but it was also practical. His family resources could be commandeered from there, and his family had plenty of hiding places and bolt-holes; if he and Thomas showed Callum Brightwell the plans for the press, his father would be the first to recognize the potential. Reproducing books had the potential to increase his black-market business ten thousandfold.
No more black sheep of the family. Jess would be welcomed with open arms, and the Library would never lay a hand on any of them. Callum didn’t hold with Burner theories, but he wasn’t a man to despise a good alliance, either; the Burners would be equally interested in the press, and what it meant for them to break the Library’s stranglehold. It could be done.
If they got away from Rome.
“Frauke,” Thomas said, and the lion immediately climbed to four paws, razor-barbed tail twitching. “Follow.”
Jess took one last look back at Glaudino’s workshop as they threaded their way through the outer room full of silent, still automata. It was an eerie sight, seeing Frauke ghosting silently along behind Thomas between her identical dead automaton twins. It was going to give him nightmares the next time he closed his eyes.
Then they were outside and pushing the door shut, and heading for the last place Jess wanted to face again. The logic of the plan was sound enough: the High Garda truly would be searching for them on the roads leading out of town, stopping carriages and transports, heavily guarding the central Roman Translation Chamber.
But not the heart of their own power. Besides, they’d already have realized that Morgan had disabled the secret Translation Chamber. It was likely they’d consider it totally useless.
Useless things weren’t guarded at a time like this.
“We’ll have to enter through the public side,” Scholar Wolfe said. “There’s a staff door at the back of the Serapeum that leads into the basilica; it might be guarded, but not heavily. They won’t expect us there.”
“What about the lions on the steps? They would have been alerted to us by now,” Morgan said.
Thomas sighed and looked back at Frauke, pacing steadily behind them with her eyes glowing bright, her head held high. “I’m sorry, Frauke. But we will all have to do our part, I think.” He looked scarecrow thin, all large bones and angles, and with his hair and beard cut close he seemed so much older than Jess remembered him. But still gentle.
How he managed that, Jess couldn’t imagine. He’d lost his optimism so long ago, he could hardly remember how it felt, and he’d never been locked in that terrible, dark place. Never been dragged into that torture room.