Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(46)

That, Jess thought, is how you destroy the loyalty of the High Garda. He knew how passionate these soldiers were about their duty, about their ideals . . . but here stood the man who personified those ideals, and he was as flawed and petty as any other. If he’d been a good leader—and he must have been, once—he’d long forgotten how to inspire.

He could only punish in the hope of keeping his uncertain grip on the reins of power.

“Sir,” Jess said, and bowed when the old man’s sharp gaze pierced him. “Do you want me to write a report to you about the Alexandrian smugglers?”

“Yes. Go. You may requisition the appropriate supplies. Neksa will see you are given approval.”

“Then, I’ll be on my way.”

“Yes. Jess?”

It was a good job that Jess was looking away at that moment; the situation had rattled him, and Jess nearly answered to it.

But the extra beat gave him a second to set himself before he looked up, innocent and grinning, to say, “Got me confused with my brother again, Archivist. But I won’t hold it against you.”

“Yes.” The Archivist’s eyes were as cold as death. “Yes, of course. Brendan.”

Then he turned and walked out, waiting for a bullet to find him, or a sphinx’s claws. The sound of his boot heels seemed very loud. Very final.

Then he was down the hallway and up the ramp and in the clean outside air, and he gasped and took a moment to lean against an ancient stone column and thank whatever gods were looking after him these days.

No. Not gods.

In the moment when he knew he was about to die, it hadn’t been a god who’d come to him. It had been a memory of Thomas.

What made him finally move was not the frowning faces of the guards protecting the carrier, or the angle of the sun; it was the knowledge that Thomas depended on him. So did Wolfe, and Khalila, Glain, Dario, Captain Santi.

And Morgan.

He looked up and found the black spire of the Iron Tower. Birds circled it, though none landed; whether that was Obscurist power or the material the thing was made from, even they had the good sense to avoid it.

He walked toward the gates and past the carrier, and though the guards surely would have shot him dead yesterday, today they let him pass. He owed consideration to the dead Scholar below, with his useless attempt at rebellion. And he couldn’t waste the gift that man’s blood had given him: the trust of the Archivist and the freedom to move without constraints.

It was time to start a war.





EPHEMERA



Text of a letter from Dario Santiago to Khalila Seif. Destroyed by Santiago without delivery prior to their departure from England.


As you well know, lovely flower, I am rarely at a loss for words, but you have a way of turning my own flaws against me, and my own virtues, too. Though which of those my eloquence might be, I leave to you to decide.

I’m setting this down on paper because I know that in the moment, when I am looking at you and I know that the course of my life rests on the words you will say . . . I don’t know if I will have the courage to speak my mind. No—not my mind. My heart. You know I protect that particular organ with more care than any other; I hold everyone at a distance, partly because I genuinely find it hard to care for people, and partly because I was hurt often when I was young. Always by those closest to me.

I say that not for sympathy—why would you have any for that? Everyone has been hurt—but because I need for you to see that I want the opposite with you. What began as flattery and, yes, a casual kind of lust, has become something entirely different. I treasure you. I honor you. I know that you are nothing I deserve, and everything I want in my life.

And so, I intend to ask you to marry me. I will do it at the very worst moment, because I am hopeless and stupid in such things, and I fully expect you will tell me with all kindness that you would rather become a nun than marry me. (Does the religion of Islam have nuns? I apologize. I should know this by now.)

But I will ask. And when I do, please know that I stand before you an honest man, with my heart for the first time wide-open. I know you can pierce it with a word.

But better dead at your feet than never having tried.

There, my eloquence is back.

Perhaps this will go better than I expected.





PART SIX





KHALILA





CHAPTER SIXTEEN




Khalila wrote letters to the families of dead men while sitting in a lush hotel waiting room in Cadiz, after begging sheets of paper and a good pen from the desk clerk. Outside of the hotel’s windows, a storm still raged, but the force was slowly dying. The ship that had delivered them would be departing soon, seeking cover in the last of the gale.

The captain had been paid very well to report that all of the prisoners had been killed during a rebellion and thrown into the sea . . . and Anit would make certain that he kept his promises. Whether the Library would believe the captain’s report or not, the truth was unprovable at the moment, and that would sow confusion and buy time. But the clock should be moving quickly, and instead, here they were: waiting.

“You shouldn’t bother with that now,” Dario said from where he watched her write. She was currently writing in Portuguese, to the family of a sailor from Lisbon. “There’ll be a lot more men lost before this is done. And the sailors on that ship would have killed us, you know.”