Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(91)

“Jess Brightwell, sir,” Jess said. “Thank you.” This all seemed so strange. He’d expected to arrive in a dark, forbidding world filled with angry soldiers ready to take them down, or, at least, in a place no better than the torture chamber beneath the basilica. But there was a kindly man and tea, flowers, and a Medica team hurrying now into the garden to tend to Glain. Maybe they had no idea they were welcoming fugitives, sworn enemies of the Archivist. Maybe word hadn’t come here at all, and once it did, the bars would finally close in on them.

He drank all the tea quickly, just in case. It was the first liquid he’d had in what seemed like hours, and he was severely thirsty. His uniform hung heavy with sweat and bloody from cuts. The one on his palm had split open again, and he took out his field kit and wrapped it in a fresh bandage. He was tying it off as Khalila came through. She seemed as dazed as he still felt by their new surroundings, and he got up to help her to the bench and pour her a cup of tea.

“What is this?” she asked, as if she truly couldn’t comprehend it. Her head scarf had come askew, and strands of her glossy, dark hair showed around her face. She dragged it off and repinned it without the slightest self-consciousness, as if he were family. He appreciated that. “Where are we? Is this the Iron Tower? I thought—”

“You thought it would be grimmer,” said Gregory, the Obscurist, as he got to his feet and came to them. “Well, you wouldn’t be alone in that, I’m sure. But it is our home, and we make it as pleasant as we can. How many of you will there be?”

“If we all make it through? Four more.” Dario’s loss seemed greater now, their decision to leave without him even worse. He knew that was what Khalila was thinking, too. He could see it in the miserable hunch of her shoulders. “Dario will be all right, Khalila. He’s clever.”

“I know,” she said. “And he does know Rome. He spent time there when he was younger. His father was an ambassador for Spain.” Jess had always known Dario came from wealth and influence, but not quite that much influence. “I think, if he were in real trouble, he would go to the embassy. They would hide him, at the very least, and get him back to Spain, where his family could find him a safe place. But I think he’ll want to find us again.”

“You mean, find you again,” Jess said. “I doubt he gives a rusty geneih about my future.”

“You wrong him. You always do.” He put an arm around her, and she sighed and relaxed against him, just a little. “I missed this. Being together. You’ve always been like a brother to me, from the moment I met you.”

“Ouch,” he said, but eased it with a smile. “I never had designs on you, Khalila. I like being someone you can rely on, as much as I rely on you.”

“Jess. You don’t rely on anyone.”

“I do,” he said. “It comes as a surprise to me, too.”

Thomas came through, and was promptly and violently sick—no surprise, since he’d been struggling with so much, for so long. Gregory calmly went for a mop and bucket to clean up after him, and Jess and Khalila moved the boy to the bench, poured him tea, and helped him lie flat when it seemed he needed that more than the restorative. By the time they’d gotten Thomas settled, Wolfe arrived, then Santi immediately after.

Jess stared hard at the couch, so hard he could feel a vein pulsing in his temple. Come on, he begged her. Come on, don’t dally around. Don’t let them take you!

When Morgan’s form coalesced in a red cloud of blood, bone, and muscle, he was instantly on his feet and moving toward her. By the time she was gasping her first breath, he was at her side. Holding her hand.

She jackknifed up into his embrace with a horrible, choking cry and locked her arms around him like she expected to be dragged away. “No,” she whispered into the fabric of his shirt. “No.”

He smoothed her hair and pressed his lips to the salty skin of her temple. “Morgan. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, and her whole body shook with the force of her gasp for breath. “I can’t do it again. There’s no other way out. They’ll lock me here for good, and I can’t, I can’t . . .”

“Nobody’s locking you in,” he told her, and he meant it. “But we need to find out what the Obscurist wants from us. Trust me? I won’t let you down, Morgan. Not this time.”

She shuddered and relaxed, just a little—enough that he was able to loosen her panicked grip on him. Jess helped her to the bench, the tea, and then turned to Santi and Wolfe, who were standing and talking to Gregory. Glain’s leg had been efficiently bandaged and she was being carried off to a surgery for repair of the torn muscle and blood vessels; on the way out, Jess reached out to brush her fingers, and she gave him a brisk, almost normal nod.

“You’re in charge until I get back,” she told him. It was half a joke, and half not.

He nodded back. “Not sure what I’m in charge of,” he said, “but I’ll do what I can. Glain. Don’t die on me.”

“Well,” she said, and managed a weak, strange smile. “As long as it’s an order, sir.”

As they carried Glain away, the Obscurist Magnus appeared from a staircase, trailing an entourage of more than a dozen others who all wore the golden collars of service to the Iron Tower.