Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(12)

But the wind was still cold enough to steal her breath away.

“Do you think they’re all right?” Thomas asked her then. Like her, he was watching the lightning. She saw it dance in his pale eyes. “Wolfe and Morgan?”

“Yes,” she said. “I believe they will be.”

“I wish I could be sure. All I can think about is . . .” He didn’t finish, but she knew what he would have said; he would have been thinking of his time trapped in the dungeons of Rome, at the mercy of the Great Library. They’d nearly broken him there. Nearly.

Thomas shook his head, violently, as if trying to throw something out of it. Bits of sea spray glittered in his stiff, close-cropped blond hair like a cap of jewels. He was growing in a thick, short beard, too. “Why did Jess let this happen?”

Khalila had her own suspicions, strong ones, but she kept them to herself. Worse to guess and be wrong. “I doubt it was at all his choice,” she said. “I think he’d have moved heaven and earth to be with us, fight with us. Don’t you?”

She saw something else flicker in his eyes then, but it was too brief for her to recognize it clearly. “The Jess I knew would do that.”

“Then believe that he’ll find us now.”

Thomas said nothing else, and she let the silence stretch warm between them. Before she’d met Thomas and her other year-mates in training at the Great Library, she’d never have believed she could befriend someone so unlike herself; he was so huge and strong and . . . well, solidly and mysteriously German. But he was brilliant and sweet and funny; of all of them, his loyalty was as unbreakable as she imagined that thick skull to be. She cherished him. She cherished all of them, in ways that continued to unfold in new and surprising directions.

“Isn’t this adorable?” a new voice said from behind them, and Khalila glanced back to see that Glain Wathen had joined them. Another tall person, but Glain had a narrow Welsh cast to her features that gave her the beauty of a precisely honed knife. “Is it a private love affair, or can anyone join?”

For answer, Khalila held out her other hand. Glain snorted and linked arms with her instead. She rocked and balanced easily on the deck and stared into the storm without a trace of fear. A great deal of appreciation, though.

“Dario’s down below puking his guts out,” Glain said. She sounded uncommonly cheerful about it. “Santi’s sleeping. He said to wake him if we sink, and not before.”

That sounded like the very practical High Garda captain. Rarely disturbed by any impending doom. If there was something to do, he’d do it, but otherwise, he saved his strength . . . though, Khalila thought, he’d been darkly quiet since they’d been taken aboard this ship. He wasn’t speaking about his feelings or about the loss of Scholar Wolfe. She understood, in part—she loved Scholar Wolfe like a dour brother or a quarrelsome uncle; not quite a father, but most definitely family.

They were all family now. And she was proud of that.

“Dario said that he needed to talk to you,” Glain said. “Go on. I’ll keep the great lump here from falling overboard.”

“I won’t fall,” Thomas said. Glain glanced at Khalila, quick as the lightning flickering on the horizon, and Khalila knew they’d both caught the inference.

He wouldn’t fall, but he’d definitely thought of jumping. It was part of the reason Khalila had spent so much time up here on the freezing decks; she wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure his anger and despair didn’t turn even darker. She didn’t think he’d do something so unforgivable, but she could understand the wild impulse. He felt betrayed, alone, lost. Hopeless.

She fought that herself. But she had faith—faith in her friends—to sustain her, as well as her unshakeable faith in the plans of Allah. They had all survived this far. All was not lost.

She had to believe it and make them believe it, too. At least Glain seemed completely unbothered by their current circumstances as unarmed prisoners, surrounded by enemies and ocean water.

“Try not to pick any fights,” she told Glain. “Here.” She stripped off the warm, stinking coat and draped it over Glain’s shoulders; she instantly regretted it when the wind sliced through the fabric of her dress and began to claw at her skin. Still, she paused long enough to plant a gentle kiss on Thomas’s cheek—one he kindly bent down to allow. “Watch Glain’s back for me,” she whispered. It would keep him solid.

“I know what you’re doing,” he whispered back. “But I will.”

“And shave your beard,” she said, in a louder tone. “It’s like trying to kiss a bear.”

He laughed, and she was glad to hear it; it wasn’t quite the old, happy laugh she remembered, but it was a start.

She fought her way across the decks, past sure-footed sailors moving about unknowable tasks, and when she arrived at the door that led below, she glanced up at the lighted bridge. The brawny, scarred captain stood there, and several of his officers, and with them the slender form of a very young woman. Anit, daughter of Red Ibrahim, and at least for now, their captor.

Anit did not spare her a glance. She was intent on charts and the words of her captain. Khalila stood for a few seconds watching them, trying to memorize the faces of those framed in that light.

The girl finally looked up, as if she felt Khalila’s regard. Anit looked away first.