Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(102)

“Yes,” Thomas said. He walked over to a stack of ready-made rifle barrels and checked the alignment by rolling one on the table. Straight and true. That was good. Very good. “I’ll need a diamond. A large one, please.”

“A—” He’d succeeded in putting Santiago at a loss for words. “I see. How large, precisely?”

Thomas showed him with a space between two fingers. Not a small space. “About this,” he said. “And as flawless as you can find, please. If there are rubies and sapphires, those will also be welcome.”

The ambassador’s expression was priceless. Thomas was mildly sorry that Jess wasn’t here to see it. “Are you . . . making some kind of jewelry?”

“This clearly isn’t the time for that,” Thomas said. “No. I am making a weapon. One capable of bringing down a flying automaton. And I think you would agree, it is something we very badly need.”

“Do you want an assistant? I can send someone—”

He missed Jess, but Jess had other concerns. “No. Just the gems, please. And if there’s food, have someone bring some? I forgot to eat.”

“Of course.” The ambassador clearly thought he was insane, but Thomas paid no attention to that, or to the man’s departure. He had only a few hours to do what he needed to do, and much to avoid thinking about. With quick, precise movements, he pulled four barrels, checked each one, and then moved on to retrieve the thinnest wire on the shelves. It was expertly drawn and perfectly formed, and as he measured and cut what he needed, he remembered the makeshift, laughable device he and Jess had cobbled together out of hope and scraps in Philadelphia. Amazing it had worked even once, much less held together long enough to save their lives.

He’d made improvements on his design since then, and now, as he imagined the three-dimensional plans he’d so carefully constructed in his head, he knew what he was creating was, in its way, as dangerous as the press the Library feared so much. High Garda weapons were deadly, but they had limited ranges.

This weapon—at least, theoretically—could strike any target at any distance, so long as it traveled in a straight line. In theory, if powerful enough, it could cross the distance between stars, the way starlight reached the earth.

Light was the most ephemeral of forces, and yet one of the most powerful. It had properties of gas and liquid and solid. Pure light, solid light . . . that was an astonishing and dangerous thing. And once he had created it and used it in public, where others could see . . . he could not control how it would be used in other hands.

So be it. Just now, he couldn’t think of the future, or of anything else beyond what would come when the new day arrived.

One part at a time, he machined the pieces he needed for not one but four separate Rays of Apollo. He had no written plans, but he didn’t need them; he had the image in his mind, and he could spin and enlarge and match pieces to it at will. He worked quietly and surely, building each piece with care, and when food arrived he ate without even looking at what the Spanish had provided him and drank whatever had come with it. His concentration stayed on the plans and the parts and the quiet, intense satisfaction when a piece fit perfectly with the next.

At some point, the ambassador must have returned, because he turned to see a black leather case on the table beside him and put the carefully assembled weapon—the first of four—aside to open it.

Inside sat the largest, most perfect diamond he’d ever seen. The size of a baby’s hand, and when he put it to the light—morning light, he realized, beginning to reflect from the distant golden cap of the Serapeum—the light exploded into perfect rainbows around him. Flawless.

It would do.

Next to it sat five other stones: two rubies, a truly enormous emerald, and two sapphires of unusual clarity. The note with them said, Spain will expect these returned, Scholar Schreiber.

Thomas examined and discarded one of the rubies and—with regret—the emerald, which simply wouldn’t fit without alterations he knew the ambassador would frown on. Then he began to add the stones to the weapons, fixing them in place with the mounts he’d added for that purpose.

Now he needed power.

He walked out of the workshop into the embassy, ignoring the polite inquiries of the few staff about at this hour (who were, he vaguely noticed, packing things as if to move). The questions became less polite when he ripped open the control panel he found in a maintenance closet and stripped out the power supply for the chemical glows. The room plunged into inky darkness, except for the rising laster of dawn through the windows, and the questions turned into demands.

He was ripping away the fourth power supply when the guards surrounded him, and a very harried, tired-looking man in a silk robe came into the room, took everything in at a glance before the power went out, and shouted for the guards to hold their fire.

A shot went off, but it missed him, and Thomas shoved his way through and into the embassy entry hall, which had better light from the east-facing windows. Some of the guards and servants were activating portable glows, and the ambassador was speaking to him, but Thomas wasn’t listening. He was closely examining the contacts and matching the power flow of these particular units against the requirements of the Ray; they were complicated mathematical calculations, and he truly didn’t have time to spare for the man. He hadn’t destroyed anything. Merely borrowed. Even now, a servant of the residence was plugging in new power supplies and the lights were coming back on.