Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(53)

“Let me in,” she said. “At the very least, you gain a hostage. One the Archivist wants very badly.”

For a moment, and the sphinx only crouched lower, and she could see the hard cables that served as its muscles flexing beneath that bronze skin. I know what to do if it attacks, she told herself. She remembered Jess’s instruction and felt a little steadier. A little stronger. She could freeze that automaton in place with a touch and walk in looking as powerful and mysterious as an Obscurist.

If it didn’t take her hand off first, of course.

“Khalila!” Dario’s shout was closer. He was running toward her. She heard the crack of a rifle shot and a yelp and backward-pedaling footsteps. Didn’t dare take her attention from the automaton, but she prayed Glain hadn’t deliberately wounded him. No, she’d have placed a shot neatly at his feet and forced him back to cover. He’d think it was a Library sniper. Hopefully. That would keep all the rest back as well. “Khalila, love, get out of there!”

“I’m coming inside,” Khalila said to the sphinx, and took another step.

It rose from its crouch, turned, and glided toward the gate.

She followed, and as she passed the barrier of that open courtyard wall, she pulled in a breath that smelled of rain and iron and rust, and a phantom hint of blood. There were gardens surrounding the Serapeum, thick with late-blooming flowers and trees whose turning leaves still clung to branches. It was a beautiful place. She imagined what it would be like after a battle to take this place. Churned, broken, and destroyed.

No. This cannot happen.

Ahead, the sphinx moved with a silky lion’s stride to the closed, thickly barred gates . . . which silently opened. The automaton paused outside of them, watching her, and as she passed it, the thing bared needle teeth in an unmistakable threat.

She stepped inside, and the gates slammed together behind her with incredible speed and force, and she very nearly cried out at the ring of the iron . . . but she stopped where she was, just a foot or two inside the sacred Serapeum grounds, and caught her breath. Her heart was speeding faster now, and she allowed herself to take in where she stood in the small respite.

This close, the form of the building did look like a resting dragon, with the wide entry hall its long, narrow head, and a pair of slitted yellow windows above glowing to give the illusion of eyes. A terrifying symbol of power, this construction; on a day less grim, on an occasion less dire, it might have looked beautiful, but the clouds and rain had stripped all ornaments away to show the pure menace beneath.

And I have walked in alone.

They let her wait for a long few moments before she felt—rather than saw—someone approaching her from the side. She turned her head without moving any other muscles that might get her unnecessarily killed and saw a uniformed High Garda soldier training a weapon on her. A turn to the other side confirmed what she already knew: there was another there as well, angled so that her merely ducking wouldn’t kill them in a crossfire. She suspected there would be a third somewhere invisible up higher in the building’s serpentine roofline.

Khalila folded her hands and waited for the real negotiations to begin.

It took another few moments before the door opened in the dragon’s mouth, and a small old woman in Library robes descended the steps with the help of a cane. She was of Japanese ancestry, and her robes reflected the cultural style of that land; her cane, Khalila noticed, was carved with the shape of a dragon’s head.

There was no mistaking the gold band around the woman’s wrist.

Khalila bowed low, and the Scholar matched it to a careful degree less deep. She carried an umbrella in her other hand, though she didn’t offer to shelter Khalila with it. The older woman’s eyes were calm and unreadable.

“Scholar,” Khalila greeted her.

“Scholar,” the other woman said. “You demonstrate disregard for your own safety. How did you know we wouldn’t simply have you killed?”

“I didn’t,” Khalila answered. Quite truthfully. “I hoped.”

The woman was motionless for a long stretch of seconds—long enough that the chill began to eat at Khalila’s nerves. But then she said, “I am Scholar Murasaki Shirasu. I am aware of who you are, of course. Not your scholarly accomplishments, which are slight, but your actions, which loom much larger.”

“I’m honored to have come to the attention of the great essayist Murasaki at all,” Khalila answered. “As to my accomplishments, I am too young to claim any.”

Murasaki gave her a slow smile. “Humble and elegant,” she said. “And you do not rise to the bait. Come inside, Scholar Seif. Let us warm ourselves with tea, and you may present your case not just to me, but to the High Garda as well. I doubt you will ever leave us again, but that was, of course, your choice.”

Khalila didn’t answer, because she couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t betray her uncertainty.

She followed Scholar Murasaki into the dragon’s mouth.





CHAPTER NINETEEN




The first thing the High Garda did the instant she crossed the Serapeum threshold was relieve her of her pistol, of course; she had expected as much. She had not quite expected to be facing so many drawn weapons—ten, at her count, though those were only the ones she could see—and she raised her arms and stood very quietly for the search, which was so thorough even Glain would have been impressed. Scholar Murasaki ignored all of it and walked across a wide, intricately inlaid wooden floor to seat herself in a carved wooden chair next to a stand that held a chained, oversized Codex.