Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(60)

“Done,” Saleh whispered back. Word passed quickly. Coughs and sneezes began at the other end. Snoring. A voice counting out loud.

Freedom was there, in his grasp. He knew the guards and the automaton routes, but even so, an escape would be impossible without tools and help. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t.

He couldn’t run and leave the others here.

You have to try. All of us agreed we would, if the chance came.

He reached out for the door and pulled.

It didn’t open.

It was locked.

Had it ever been unlocked at all?

It happened before. You imagined Santi was with you the last time. You imagined he was taken to be questioned. You imagined you could hear his screams. You kept crying for them to stop hurting him. It had all been very real, in those dark months. He had needed someone so badly that he’d created Santi out of whole imagination . . . but even that desperate delusion hadn’t been able to block out the very real pain.

You’re imagining things again.

No, that couldn’t be true. The door had been unlocked, hadn’t it? He’d felt it move under his hand. And you heard Santi’s screams back then, but he was never there.

But why would he imagine Qualls? His torturer? What sense did that make?

Wolfe put a hand on the wall to steady himself. The rough stone felt damp and slick under his palm, and very real. He concentrated on that, on the texture of what he could feel, the smell of the place. This is reality.

The door had felt real as it moved, too.

He was coming apart, just as he had before, in a cell like this under the Forum in Rome. Qualls had been there. Imagining him was a sign that his healed, twice-strong bones were cracking. That he couldn’t hold.

Wolfe collapsed to the floor and rolled over on his back, staring at the black ceiling. Opened his mouth and started to scream without making a sound. He felt tears streaming down from the corners of his eyes, and the ache inside felt black and empty and bottomless.

I’m not strong. I’m broken. I can’t save anyone. I can’t even save myself.

As he lay there, he heard the whispering tread of the sphinx again, saw the muted red glow of the eyes turn to regard him, but he didn’t move, and the monster didn’t lurk. When he was sure it was past, he rolled up to his feet and crawled into the bed. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, but it was more comfortable than the cold stone, at least by a small margin.

He felt Santi’s phantom warmth settle beside him, felt his lover’s arms around him, and heard Santi whisper, I’ll be with you. When you think you can’t endure, I will help. Believe in me, if you can’t believe in yourself. No, that was a memory, not a phantom; when he’d come back from Rome a broken, shaking shell of a man, that’s exactly what Nic had said to him.

There was no Qualls. Qualls was a specter, a ghost, a terrible memory screaming under the surface. A phantom, to drag him into the darkness.

He deliberately summoned up Nic in every line, every texture, every memory he could find, and held him close. Nic would keep him safe.

It was a trick, a fidget, a lie, but it let him slide away into a dark, dreamless, whispering sleep at last.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE




Morning brought a certain sour satisfaction with it. Wolfe woke alone, curled on his bed, and though there was never any morning light to help mark the hours, the glows had been brightened again. He heard the normal shuffle of men and women in their cells, and before he rose, he quickly ran through the map in his mind, placing each of them in the three-dimensional model he’d built, then adding the guards one by one, in as much detail as he could. Last, the automata.

The imaginary visit in the night seemed like a vague dream to him now, and he was glad of it. It was a bitter taste in his mouth to think he could be so fragile. They hadn’t even used torture yet, only deprivation and the boredom and routine of prison.

But the counterpoint to it was the sure and certain knowledge that come the Feast of Greater Burning, they were going to die, and horribly. So in a sense, the torture was ever present, and none of the guards had to sully their hands with prisoner blood. Not, he thought, that most would blink at the job.

“Wolfe!”

A tap on the bars from Saleh’s corner, and Wolfe rose and walked there. “What is it?”

Saleh let out a breathless laugh. “What do you mean? What happened last night?”

He’d forgotten that he’d spoken to Saleh in the depths of his delusion. Or at least had hoped that the conversation had been imagined as well. Wolfe took a moment to think how best to say it, but he didn’t have a chance before they heard a sharp cry from somewhere down the hall. Hard to pinpoint where it was coming from, but it took only seconds for word to be passed down the row.

“That’s my father,” Saleh said. He was trying to sound calm, but Wolfe could hear the tightness underneath it. “They’ve taken him out of the cell. Where are they taking him? For what?”

“I don’t know,” Wolfe said. “Focus, Saleh. He’s valuable. They won’t execute him out of hand, no matter what he does . . .” His voice trailed off, and he blinked.

Because it was true. Only a few of them, of course; the patriarch of the Seif family was one, Scholar Maria Kent was another, located down a level on the east hall. One or two others who stood high enough to be counted as truly exceptional prisoners that the Archivist would want to make a public show of destroying.