Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(39)

“Sit,” a voice said, and for a disorienting moment, he thought it was the statue of the goddess Bast speaking to him . . . and then he realized that something very wrong was happening. The air smelled sickly sweet, too thick, too heavy in his lungs. He felt himself moving, not to a chair, but to collapse to a sitting position on the carpeted floor like a dropped puppet. This is wrong, he thought, and the word rang in his head like a silver bell: wrong, wrong, wrooooooong . . . It smeared into a silver mist and was gone, and he sat, waiting, for the goddess to speak again.

“Tell me your name,” the voice said.

“Brendan Brightwell,” he said.

“Again.”

“Brendan Brightwell.”

“Again.”

“Brendan Lyell Sinclair Brightwell,” he said. He felt free now, floating outside his heavy, inert body. “Son and heir of Callum Brightwell.”

“Did you come here with a valid offer from Callum Brightwell?”

“Yes.”

“Do you intend to deceive us?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to cheat us?”

Brendan felt himself grinning. “I’d be foolish if I didn’t try,” he said. “Though if you make it profitable enough, I’ll play straight. Father’s orders.”

He heard another voice, low and in the background. An angry old man. Cheat me, will they? I’ll see them all hanged. Hanged, like Liam, on a dirty gibbet in London when Brendan was just a boy. He remembered watching. It had been an object lesson in the price of failure. His brother Jess had tried to turn away, had cried. But Brendan had watched, dry-eyed, and he’d won his father’s approval that day. It wasn’t that he hadn’t loved Liam, though the boy was much older than him and Jess; it was that he understood, as Jess never had, that death was the cost of play. Great rewards required real risks.

Why was he thinking of Liam? Hadn’t thought of him in ages. But now he remembered his elder brother ruffling his hair, sneaking him treats when no one was looking, especially when he’d been exiled to his room in punishment. Liam had died younger than Brendan was now.

He felt a trickle of wetness on his cheeks but couldn’t raise his hands to wipe it away.

“What is your name?” the voice asked again.

“Brendan Brightwell.”

“And the name of your brother?”

“The live one, or the dead one?”

Whispered conversation he couldn’t follow. “The live one.”

“Jess,” he said. “Jess Brightwell.”

“Do you love your brother?”

“Of course.”

“Would you betray him?”

Brendan fell silent. Remembered Liam on the gallows, waiting for the drop. In that last moment, Liam had looked straight at him.

“Yes,” he said. “If I had to.” It broke something inside him with a sharp, cold snap. “Don’t make me.”

“Where is your brother?”

“I don’t know.”

“At your home?”

“I don’t know.”

The voice took on a dark amusement. “But you’ll tell me where your home is, won’t you?”

“No,” Brendan said. “Before I left England, I took the precaution of having that particular memory blocked by a Mesmer. I can’t lead you to my father, or the press. Or my brother, if that’s who you want most.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To make a deal. Simple as that.”

“Do you intend to betray the Archivist or the Great Library?”

“No,” Brendan said. “Not unless my father decides there’s a better deal elsewhere.”

Honest answers, every one. Silence ticked by like a leaking tap, drip, drip, drip of seconds, minutes, and he waited, frozen in place. His legs were going numb. He wasn’t sure he could stand up even if the goddess allowed it.

Then it all began again.

And again.

And again.

His voice had gone hoarse by the time silence fell at last, and his skin felt raw from the cold. He was so tired it was all he could do to hold himself upright, and he was pitifully grateful when the voice of the goddess finally said, “We’re finished here.”

A fresh blast of air hit him in the face, fluttering his hair and clothes, and he pulled in a breath of something that ached sharply in his lungs. He felt weak, and then exhausted beyond any reasonable measure, and pitched sideways onto the carpet as if his muscles had been cut. He gasped in the cool, clear air, and as the fog began to subside in his head he knew what had happened. Gas. He’d been drugged. But not only that. There had been a compulsion as well, something centering in the bracelet he wore. An Obscurist who’d trained as a Mesmer—and a powerful one—had been manipulating him. Trying to pry the lid off his brain and stir around in there.

The sense of nausea that swept over him made him glad he’d collapsed; if he’d been upright, no doubt he’d have ruined the carpet. It subsided before it grew too desperate, and he slowly rolled over on his back as a door at the rear of the room opened to admit the Archivist and an impressive retinue of armed guards.

“You bastard,” Brendan gasped, and tried to get up. He failed but kept trying until he finally managed to climb to his feet and stagger to the nearest chair. He fell into it with sick gratitude and cradled his pounding head in both hands. “What was the point of that?”