Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(13)

Interesting. Some guilt? Or just disinterest?

Belowdecks, the tossing felt worse, and the air was thick with the smells of rust, mold, and—as she approached the tiny cabin that Dario shared with Thomas—vomit. Khalila eased it open. “Dario?”

She winced at the sound of him spewing into a bucket. From the sound of it, the bucket badly needed emptying. She looked in to find him collapsing back on his bunk. Dario, even in the worst of times, always prided himself on his neat appearance, but just now he was pallid, with messy hair and a stained shirt that clung as if he’d gone swimming in it. She could smell the rank sweat even over the sick.

“Cristo,” he groaned, and she didn’t know if it was meant for a prayer or a curse. “This is no place for you, flower, but since you’re here, pray God bring me a dagger and let me get it over with.”

“Hush,” she said, and draped a towel over the slop bucket. She carried it to the small toilet in the corner and emptied it, and rinsed it in the basin before setting it back near his bunk.

“You may look like a delicate thing, but you have the cast-iron stomach of a born sailor,” Dario said. He looked feverish, eyes reddened and cheeks flushed, but his skin had a translucent pallor she didn’t like. “Stay a moment. I need to talk to you. And I wouldn’t have called for you to act as my nursemaid—you know that.”

“Well, I can’t imagine Glain emptying your slop bucket,” she said, and settled next to him on the bunk. She took his hand and felt the tremor in it. “You’re dehydrated. You need water. I’ll fetch some.”

“Not now.” He studied her for a few seconds. “You know, don’t you?”

She smiled a little. “Know what?”

“About Jess.”

“I have a guess,” she said, and the smile went away. She felt cold inside now. Hard as ice. “Why didn’t you tell me, Dario? Why did you—”

“I couldn’t. We told Morgan, of necessity; we needed her help for him to carry this off at all. But you’ve too honest a face, madonna; if he’d told you that he planned to impersonate his brother and go to Alexandria in Brendan’s place, you’d have given the game away when they came to take us. We needed you to fight like your life depended on it.”

She’d come dangerously close to killing Brendan—she remembered that; she’d been intent on cutting down as many of the Brightwell soldiers as she could, trying to keep from being taken prisoner. And Brendan—that had been Jess—had been one of those she’d have been happy to run a sword through. “You still should have told me.”

Dario shook his head. “We’re far down that river now. Jess is in Alexandria, and his credentials assure him access to the Archivist. He’ll have delivered Morgan to the Iron Tower, where she has her own plans.”

“And Scholar Wolfe?” She was hoping to hear that Wolfe, too, had been privy to this, that he had some brilliant scheme to make this gamble worthwhile.

“Wolfe didn’t know,” Dario admitted. “If he had, Santi would have sensed something was off. And we couldn’t risk Santi refusing to cooperate. Wolfe would have approved of this. We were certain of that.”

Whatever doubts she had about it, they were not useful now. “And Thomas?”

“Are you serious? The worst liar in the world? Though I admit, I thought he was going to tear Jess in half before the fool escaped.”

The Translation tag Jess had used would have deposited Jess—and Wolfe and Morgan—into the center of the Great Archives, inside the stronghold. It was, she had to admit, an audacious plan. It might even be a good one. But the risk was fearfully high—not just for Jess, but for all of them. “Is Jess’s plan to kill the Archivist?” If he did, Jess couldn’t survive it, but it would undoubtedly be a victory of some kind. But someone near the throne would rise to fill the office, and likely it would be someone just as bad; she shuddered to think of that rat-faced Gregory, now Obscurist, assuming the job.

No, until the Library saw the error of its ways and chose a new course of its own will, until the Curia and the Archivist were replaced with leaders who understood the damage their repression had done . . . until then, assassination accomplished nothing, except to force the Library to crush down with more force.

She hoped Jess knew that.

Dario shrugged a little. “He’ll do whatever he thinks best, as he usually does. It’s aggravating, especially since the little scrubber usually turns out to be right.”

“Stop calling him that. You love him, too.”

Dario sighed and closed his eyes. “You mentioned water, didn’t you? I could do with that, my love. I don’t want you to see me in this state.”

“Nonsense,” she said, and smiled. “I love seeing you in this state. It means that for once, you’re human and have given up your delusions of grandeur.”

“I do not have delusions of grandeur. I am, in fact, grand.”

She laughed, but once that bright moment faded—and she let it fade—she said, “Once you’re better, we will have a talk about how much I despise dishonesty. You may consider that a warning. I will not be lied to, Dario. Not even for what you believe is my own good.”

“If I survive the night, I will look forward to your lecture,” he said. “And I know. If the stakes of this hadn’t been so high, the choices so few . . . but I should have known you would figure out our plan eventually. There is no one like you, Khalila. No one on God’s earth.”