Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(68)

“You need things to die to make you live?” Annis said.

“You consume living things in every dish you eat.”

“It isn’t the same!”

“It is,” Morgan said. “But if you want to leave and never deal with me again, I understand that. Just . . . don’t betray me. Please.”

Annis shook her head and sank down on her bed, head in her hands. She looked her age in that moment, every year of it; then she wiped the tears from her face and took a deep breath. “I always said I’d deal with the Christian devil to win freedom for those who wanted out of here. Like Eskander. I suppose you’re near enough, at that.” She swallowed. “Could you kill Gregory the same way? Just . . . draw the life out of him?”

“Not before he’d kill me. That’s why I haven’t. That, and . . . I don’t want to do that. Not that way.”

“Why? It would solve everything.”

That evil taste on her tongue. That howling emptiness. She couldn’t describe why, except to say, “Because if I kill that way, I think . . . I think it will destroy whatever’s left in me that’s still good. And you’ll have something much worse than Gregory to stop.” She looked up and met Annis’s eyes. “Will you help me? Get me to the air duct?”

It was a long moment, and then Annis said, “If you’re up to it.”

“I am.” I have to be.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR




Getting to the proper level meant bypassing four separate security measures, but those were minor issues, far too reliant on the wards and scripts and common knowledge that the area was off-limits. There was one guard present, on a roaming schedule, but Annis had noted down his routes, and they slipped by him without notice. He was bored and tired and had likely never had an alarm in all his time inside the Iron Tower.

The air-circulation hub was a vast open core, drawing in air from the outside of the building, filtering it, running it through a complex series of devices to heat or cool as needed, and then blowing it back out through a series of branching ducts.

“Constructed by Artifex engineers,” Annis said, and pointed to the etched letters beneath the rows and rows of grilles. “And helpfully labeled as well. But we won’t be able to take these covers off, you know.”

“Doesn’t matter. Can you tell which one goes to Eskander’s rooms?”

“Which room do you prefer?”

“Sitting room,” she said. Talking to him in the privacy of his bedroom seemed . . . presumptuous. Annis nodded and led the way through a twisting, confusing maze of corridors that must be used only by maintenance engineers, and only very occasionally. “Here,” Annis said, and pointed to one particular grille. “That’s the one.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. It’s the same number that appeared in the plans for the vent. Engineers like things to be specific.” Annis winked. “I met one of them once who was assigned here to install the lift and the new electrical lights. Well, met isn’t quite the right word. But I did like him.”

“Very helpful,” Morgan said, and pulled one of the crystals from the pocket of her robe. Even wrapped in the thick layer of padding she’d tied around it, it was a small thing, only about the size of her finger, and nearly as slim, and it fit easily through the grate. She set it down carefully.

“The question now is, how do we ensure it gets to the far end . . . ,” Annis began, then checked herself as she heard the steady roar of the air system begin. “Of course. It’s light enough. The air will take it to the other end of the duct, all the way to the grate.”

“We hope. Move.”

They wedged themselves into an alcove meant for this purpose, holding tight to handholds put there, as the huge fan set in the center of the open middle spun up with an increasing roar and fresh air blew through every grated opening around the circle. It was deafeningly loud, which was amazing, since Morgan had never thought about how the air moved through this sealed tower . . . or why she rarely heard the sound of it. There must be sound suppressors on the grates of some kind. Oh no. No, no, no . . . That might destroy this plan before it could start.

But no. She calmed her racing heartbeat. The most effective way wouldn’t be to put that suppression on the grille inside a room, but here, where the noise was the loudest . . . and when the fan spun down again, and the hurricane-force wind died, she ventured out to the grate to peer inside. Good, the crystal was now gone . . . and as she ran her fingers over the grate, she could feel the script that had been woven through the metal to quiet the noise.

She broke it with a sharp snap, took out the other crystal from her pocket, and said, “Obscurist Eskander? Can you hear me? Please answer if you can hear me. I will be able to hear you on this end.”

She held the crystal to her ear and, to her surprise, heard music—a harp, she thought, but she wasn’t certain; the sound quality wasn’t that sharp. Whatever it might be, it stopped abruptly, and there was nothing for a long moment. Long enough that she wondered if she’d imagined the sound after all.

Then a man’s voice, shockingly close, said, “Who are you? How is this possible?”

“My name is Morgan,” she said. “Morgan Hault. I knew the Obscurist—I mean, the old one, Keria. And I know your son, Christopher Wolfe.”