Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(34)

For a disorienting moment, Morgan imagined Jess here. She could vividly see him sprawled just there on that tufted couch, an original volume in his hands. He’d secured reading material even in their Philadelphia prison. He’d have found this a rare delight.

But the young man sitting on the couch—not sprawling—was reading a Blank, and he quickly put it aside and rose at the sight of the Obscurist Magnus.

Then he looked at her, and she stared back without a single flicker of expression. She didn’t dislike him, not at all; his name was Benjamin Argent, and he was a kind, smart, intelligent soul.

“Morgan,” he said, and extended his hand. He was taller than she was, and slender, and she thought she could see both resignation and resentment in the brief eye contact they shared before both looked away. “You’re back.”

“Evidently.”

“I didn’t expect to ever see you again.” His tone was neutral, but she easily read what he meant: I hoped I’d never see you again.

“It came as something of a surprise to me, too.”

Gregory was smiling at them both. A cold, knowing smile. He said nothing, but the silence said everything he needed to convey to her—no, to both of them. Morgan knew that Ben already had a lover within the Iron Tower, but not the one that had been chosen for him. Ben had politely, calmly, pointedly refused to submit.

“I have a question for the two of you,” the Obscurist said. “Do you recall the last time an Obscurist was executed for disobedience in the Iron Tower?”

It was such an unexpected question that Morgan glanced at Ben, mystified, and he seemed just as puzzled. “No, sir,” Ben said. “Punishments, yes. Execution, no.”

“Exactly,” Gregory said. “Obscurists have been exempt from execution for a very long time. We have always been a rare breed, and over the past thousand years there have been fewer and fewer of us. A few hundred years ago, Obscurists were free to come and go from this place, you know. Free to marry whomever they wished. The folly of this became obvious over time. We are, and always will be, a valuable resource. So every possible effort is made to rehabilitate Obscurists who fail to comply with their expected duties. Correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben said. “I’m not sure what you—”

“The rules have changed,” Gregory said. “And none of this is for your benefit.”

He cut the young man’s throat.

It was so sudden, deliberate, and shocking a move that for an instant, Morgan didn’t even understand what she was seeing. A flash of a knife Gregory had held casually at his side. A sudden, violent burst of red across Gregory’s robes (plain robes, he planned this, he wore things he could afford to have stained). The sharp, copper smell flooded over her, and she felt trapped in it, off-balance and slow with horror.

She looked down, still not comprehending what had happened. Benjamin had collapsed, his lifeblood pumping out and soaking the rug he lay on. He was gasping for air, and she thought wildly, stupidly, that she should do something, anything, and her shock broke with an almost audible snap inside.

The rush of anguish, horror, and fury mixed with the red taste of blood in the air, and she reached for power, any power, to use to strike back.

“No, no, no,” Gregory said. “None of that.” He touched her collar.

The agony that hit her was like nothing she had felt before. She screamed and collapsed next to the dying young man, and felt his warm blood on her skin as she writhed uncontrollably. She could feel his life seeping away, and she couldn’t touch it. Couldn’t manage more than a tortured gasp for breath.

She was barely conscious when Gregory leaned over her. His blood-flecked face was framed by black sparkles as she fought to stay conscious. “Consider this a lesson,” the Obscurist Magnus said. “I know you’re thinking of ways to undermine me. The first time you defy an order from me, any order, someone else will die. I told you. The rules have changed. You and your friends did that.”

She gasped for air that seemed thick and liquid in her lungs. Gregory’s voice seemed smeared and far away, his face receding down a long, dark tunnel.

You and your friends did that.

And then she tumbled away into the black.





EPHEMERA



Text of a letter from Brendan Brightwell to Jess Brightwell, sent via ship from England to Alexandria. Lost, along with the ship Valiant Isis, in a storm off the coast of Spain.


I’m as bored as bored could be, Brother. Being you is dead boring. I’ve been given stacks of books, and I’m forced to make some show of actually reading them, since I’m supposed to be you.

You are impossible. How do you ever live with yourself?

I’m sorry to have to tell you that no one misses you. Well, certainly not Da, who rubs his hands together in glee when he thinks about the vast amounts of geneih he’s about to make from the Library, and the equally vast amounts of other currencies that are pouring into his banks from every corner of the earth. Your Thomas’s press is something of a nine-day wonder. Every unpleasant character from Shanghai to the American colonies has sent emissaries to have a look, and he’s gotten quite good at demonstrating the thing. God help us if it breaks, but Thomas left thorough instructions. I’m sure that—as you—I’d be forced into pretending to fix it.