Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(56)

“You’re talking treason,” the High Garda commander rumbled.

“I am asking a question,” Murasaki said, with glacial composure that Khalila herself didn’t possess—not inwardly. This had become a thorny knot of a conversation, and she didn’t dare inject herself. She’d set it in motion. Now she could only stand back and see how it ended. “And the question is, to whom do all of us owe our loyalty? To an Archivist who seems willing to provoke wars to get his hands on his enemies . . . or to the Library?”

Khalila imagined, quite vividly, that this debate might end with her own blood on the floor, and felt a little faint . . . but also, oddly, a little thrilled. Finally, they were engaged in the world. Affecting it directly. And that felt . . . powerful. It felt important.

“You took an oath, same as I did, Shirasu,” the commander said. “Whatever we think of the man, he is the elected head of the Library.”

“Perhaps I do not remember my oath all that well, my friend. What was the wording of it? Did it swear my allegiance to a man?”

The commander stroked his beard. Khalila knew Murasaki was ruthlessly correct: the oath was to the Library, not to the Archivist who headed it. But he still had an answer. “It’s up to the Curia to remove him, then. Not to the head of one Serapeum far away from Alexandria.”

“The head of my discipline rose to the level of Curia through corruption, as did most of them,” she said. “Favors for favors, payments, patronage, and favoritism. I’m not blind, Fergus. I know the corruption of which this young woman speaks. Do you think we punished France solely because of its rebellion against the Library? It was a convenient excuse to loot an entire country of its treasures, which became a river of gold to enrich the Library’s flagging treasury. I know that because I saw it. And for many years, I have regretted that silence.” She smiled slightly, and it softened the severe lines of her face. “Fergus, you told me yourself of your discomfort when the previous High Commander was removed and replaced by someone you didn’t think was half so worthy.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “Captain Chu was a pompous ass and only as good as the lieutenants under him, that’s true. But he’s not bent.”

“When a strong gale constantly blows, everything bends,” Murasaki said. “And even the most honest make accommodations, and soon they are not honest at all.”

Khalila’s attention was drawn back to the librarian, who was edging closer to the front now. Her body seemed stiff, and her face shone with sweat in the reflected light from the window above, though the temperature inside was cool enough. She wasn’t registering objections anymore. Her gaze was fixed on Murasaki, and she was heading straight for the Scholar where she sat in her chair.

Khalila saw the librarian’s hand come out from the pocket of her robe and knew she had seconds to act. She didn’t know and couldn’t see what it was the woman held—knife, gun, something else—but she lunged forward, grabbed the woman’s hand and twisted it.

It was a bottle.

Liquid splashed onto the woman’s robe in a long, slick stain from chest to hips, and the smell of it hit Khalila an instant before she felt the drops that had hit her exposed hand begin to burn. She grabbed a thick fold of her skirt and wrapped the skin tight to stifle the fire; so long as it was starved for oxygen it couldn’t spread and burrow, though the pain was a sharp, stabbing agony that made her gasp in breaths.

She was lucky.

There was no saving the librarian.

The woman screamed as her robe erupted in a rush of green fire that greedily wrapped around her. Everyone scrambled out of the way. Murasaki came to her feet and shouted orders Khalila couldn’t hear.

The Greek fire caught with a vengeance as the commander—Fergus—shouted orders. The librarian continued to scream as her skin turned red, then black under the flames. She turned in wild circles, and where she stepped, fire took hold. It was chaos.

And then Murasaki herself took a gun from a soldier and put a bullet in the woman’s heart.

The body collapsed to the inlaid marble floor, hissing and burning, until a High Garda soldier dressed in thick padding ran to the rescue and sprayed a thick, suffocating foam over the body.

Khalila tried to be still. The stench, the smoke, the horror of it, was all too much, and around her, others were screaming, crying, running away into the other parts of the vast complex. She composed herself, tried to breath shallowly, and waited for Murasaki to realize what had just happened.

It didn’t take long.

The old woman handed the pistol back to the soldier, who seemed rightfully ashamed of his lack of action, and exchanged a long look with her guard commander. These two, it seemed, truly were friends of long standing. There was very real regard; it burned in the look. Fergus was breathing heavily, fury in those blue eyes; Murasaki, for her part, seemed as calm as ever. “So,” she said. “We knew it could happen.”

“Excuse me?” Khalila said. She felt off-balance now. “You knew someone would try to kill you?”

“I have been living on borrowed time since word began to spread of Christopher Wolfe and his arrest and . . . erasure.”

“You know Wolfe?”

“I know him very well. He was a brilliant man, if somewhat unlikeable. It came as a blow to many of us when he was taken from the rolls of the Scholars. We never knew what heresy or crime he had committed to earn it, but most who knew him were certain it was wrong. Tell me, does he still live?”