Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(106)

He returned her salute, open hand over heart, and as she ran off to find his company, Wolfe said, “She’s going for your job, Nic.”

“After today, she can have it,” he said. “And may God help anyone who gets in her way. She didn’t miss a single shot, did you notice?”

“I was trying not to be roasted alive. It tends to erase the details.”

Santi pulled his lover close, and in this quiet moment before everything began, and ended, he was happier than he’d been in years.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN




GLAIN

Finding Botha and Tom Rolleson took only a moment—Santi’s company was camped under a large camouflage tent in the back. Though Botha seemed surprised, Troll didn’t; whether they valued promotions on a day like this, she couldn’t say, but both seemed calm and ready. The whole company did. They were ready to move on a moment’s notice. We have five hundred soldiers, she thought. Against the same amount of High Garda Elite and a small army of automata. She didn’t mind a hard fight, but she had to admit that even after removing the dragon from the equation, the math was still unforgiving.

But it was better than it had been before Thomas had stepped out of the workshop with those weapons.

Still, Glain was happy to surrender the strange gun back to Thomas after running to rejoin him and Khalila; not that she didn’t value the pure destructive power of the thing, but there was a skin-crawling ease to it that made her feel a little ill. Killing—and though this time, they’d only aimed those beams at an automaton, surely the time was fast approaching where it would be searing human flesh—killing ought to be more . . . difficult.

Thomas checked each one and opened three out of four of the weapons to knock out large, shining stones.

“Are those . . . jewels?”

“Yes,” he said, but he was engrossed in the last weapon. “Interesting. The diamond drew the least power, perhaps because of the size of the stone, or the refraction, or—I’ll have to examine the power-consumption rates more closely.”

“Where did you get them?”

He glanced at her, and the fog lifted in his eyes for a second. He put two warm blue stones and one very warm red one into her hand. “Give these back to the ambassador,” he said. “Tell him I need the loan of this last one a little longer.”

“Oh, I’ll take the guns as well,” said the ambassador himself, and Glain kicked herself mentally for not seeing the man approach. He was a quiet one, Alvaro Santiago. “Please.”

“No,” Thomas said.

Santiago raised both eyebrows. He wasn’t dressed like a royal ambassador now; he looked like a common sailor. The only thing that didn’t fit—and would change the instant he left these grounds, Glain thought—was his accent, far too refined for the rest of him. “Perhaps I should rephrase my request,” Alvaro said, and a brace of Spanish soldiers—both in common clothing, too—stepped out of concealment behind the columns and leveled guns on the three of them.

Glain revised her objections to the power of the weapons, but it was too late now, and she was late even drawing her sidearm. Next to her, Khalila began to step forward and, no doubt, deliver a powerful speech; Glain stopped her by the single expedient of throwing out a solid arm to halt her in her tracks and looking to Thomas.

Thomas flipped a switch on his Ray of Apollo and calmly raised it and pointed it at the ambassador. “No,” he said again. “After today, these will be destroyed. I’ll send your diamond to you.”

“The diamond is not half so valuable as what you hold in your hands, and I’m sure you know this,” Alvaro said. “Thomas. You are a brilliant young man, an Artifex worthy of the best days of the Great Library. Don’t be stupid. I would hate to extinguish such a light.”

“If I shoot,” Thomas said, “there won’t be enough of you left to bury. I’m grateful for your help and your workshop. But I won’t give you these guns. And I won’t make more for you, or for anyone. There are no plans. The secret dies with me.”

Glain eased her sidearm out of its holster. She took up a High Garda shooting stance and aimed at the ambassador’s head. “So say we all,” she said.

For a long, tense moment she was certain the man would order them killed; she was not at all sure Thomas intended to carry out his threat. But then Alvaro turned to his men and gestured, and they lowered their weapons. “Very well, Scholar, I understand,” he said. “But you must also understand that sooner or later, someone else will make one, and that person will be less moral than you. It wasn’t worth your life.”

“It was to me,” Thomas said. He pointed the Ray down at the three discarded, de-jeweled weapons and, with one short pull of the trigger, reduced them to smoking, melted wreckage. He checked the gauge on the weapon. “Interesting. Still two more shots. Don’t make me waste them.”

Santiago shook his head and said, “Use them to free my cousin. I do care about the wretch. I’d stay if my king didn’t order me home.” He gave Glain a respectful nod and she put away her gun. Khalila earned a full court bow. “I will be seeing all of you again, I hope.”

“If you do,” Khalila said, “I hope you don’t bring an army with you. Tomorrow, this is still the Great Library, and it stands. If we win, we will keep it safe against anyone—even friends—who tries to take what isn’t rightly theirs. You should be on your way. The fall of that dragon will bring Library troops.”