Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(35)

Do overthrow your tyrant and finish this soon. Since you don’t have half as much of a fondness for wine, or food, or casual ladies, I’m forced to do without most of the things that make life worthwhile.

Books, Jess. Really?

Release me from the hell soon, or I might just release myself.





PART FIVE





JESS





CHAPTER TWELVE




For a long few days, Jess waited for word. Any word would have been better than the frozen silence from the Serapeum; he’d expected to be summoned for more interrogation, threatened, or—most unlikely—delivered to the Great Archives to begin choosing books for the trade with his father. He waited for any further messages from Morgan, but none arrived. No word from Dario’s cousin, either, though he could see from his front door that there were always men and women posted to watch him. Whether they were Library or Spanish spies, he had no way of telling.

Might as well get on with it, then, he thought that morning, as he watched the sunrise and drank sweet, black, thick coffee. He stood in his doorway and leaned there, marking the positions of each watcher. They were as bored as he was. He’d given them no reason at all to raise their alarms, after all. That was intentional.

Jess held one hand down at his side and, with deliberation, spelled out his message in sign: Send Quest now. Santiago had told him that he’d have someone watching for any such communications; Jess could only hope that the agents weren’t asleep on the job at this early hour. At least the ambassador had seemed like a serious, competent man. Perhaps he inspired others to be just as alert.

He repeated the sequence of letters five times, just to be sure; it took the entire leisurely drunk cup of coffee, and the entire sunrise, to do it without making it seem obvious. He was praying that none of the High Garda spies could read sign, or at least, not the specific Spanish sign dialect that Dario had taught him.

After he’d thrown the dregs of the cup into the street, he turned and went back inside, shut the door, and waited on Elsinore Quest.

Quest never arrived.

The High Garda did.

His first warning was when the door smashed open and a flood of uniforms rushed through it; he was thrown against the wall with shouted warnings ringing in his ears, and while his face was pressed tight to the rough paint, he listened to them tear apart the house.

“What’s this?”

A soldier yanked him back by the collar, slammed him into the chair at the kitchen table, and held up two tightly wrapped packets in thin metallic foil, each about the size of his hand. Jess shrugged. The soldier carefully slit one open and peered at the brown sludge inside, then sniffed it.

“Smoke bomb,” he reported to his commander, who stood watching. She nodded sharply. “Expertly made.”

“Of course it is. We gave him access to a Codex. He likely has dozens of toys made by now. Tear it apart. Find everything.” She turned her gaze to Jess. “I don’t blame you. I’d do the same. But others might not be so forgiving.”

“I was bored,” Jess said. “What else was there to do? Couldn’t go out for a stroll, could I?” He finished it with Brendan’s best, most charming smile, the one his brother deployed to great effect, and watched it have no impact at all.

“Pity you didn’t show a little good faith and patience, Brightwell. You might have lived through this.” She shook her head. “Odds are, I won’t be seeing you again.”

The urge to just run felt dirty and overwhelming, and for a few seconds he allowed himself the fantasy. He could fight. He might even make it to the safety of the Spanish embassy; from there, he could be out of Alexandria on a friendly ship. When he closed his eyes, he could feel the cool salt spray on his face.

And where could he go to escape the guilt?

Running meant leaving Scholar Wolfe to die screaming in the Feast of Greater Burning. It meant leaving Morgan locked in the Iron Tower, forced into a life she never wanted—and that she’d gone back to voluntarily, out of sheer faith in his ability to pull this off.

Run, and you’re the worst kind of coward, he told himself. The part of him that was so very good at impersonating his twin, Brendan, argued back, Run, and I’m a pragmatist. It was always a risky plan. It isn’t going to work if I’m locked up here, without access, without influence. I can make another plan.

Jess closed his eyes and, in a moment, opened them again. If running was the intelligent thing to do, then he would have to be a fool.

It took the High Garda less than five minutes to strip his little prison down to bare floor and bare walls; they were well trained indeed. They found almost all the things he’d hidden: the carefully sharpened knives, the concoctions he’d brewed from spices and oils to create stinging, blinding fogs; the small, crude still he’d made to brew pure alcohol. The captain set it on the table with raised eyebrows. “That’s for personal consumption,” Jess said. “I told you I was bored.” It wasn’t, of course. Alcohol was an excellent base for many things, including firebombs. Hardly as effective as Greek fire, but then, he couldn’t make Greek fire out of fruit, sugar, and yeast, all of which they’d provided him as part of his kitchen supplies.

“Clever little criminal,” she said. “The worst kind. Get up. Let’s go.”

He shrugged. They didn’t shackle him, which he found interesting, but they closed around him in a cordon and took him out of the house to the street.