Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(75)

It was legendary, that sound: an eerie, shrieking rise and fall that pierced the ear and woke a deep, anxious terror inside. Monsters screamed like that. The alarm at the Lighthouse had last sounded two hundred years ago, when a huge storm had threatened the city; it hadn’t been activated on a clear day, like this one, in hundreds of years before that.

Jess stood rooted to the spot, listening, and saw people stepping outside of buildings and homes around him. Red Ibrahim’s door opened, and a cluster of servants came out, nervously wiping their hands on aprons. No sign of the man himself.

“What is it?” asked a large, square woman in a white head scarf. A chef, he thought, pulled away from the morning’s food preparations. “Do you know?”

Jess shook his head. “A test?”

“I’ve never heard it tested before. Wouldn’t they announce it in advance?” She rocked back and forth, silent for a moment, then burst out, “I wish they’d shut it off!”

She’d had to speak loudly to be heard over the wailing, and as soon as she said it, as if she’d wished it done, the shriek of the alarm cut off. Echoes rolled through the streets, and a profound, uneasy silence settled. Nothing moved—nothing except speeding troop carriers, moving out from the High Garda compound. Dozens of them, spreading out to different parts of the city.

And with them, the loping, shining forms of automata.

Jess felt sickness curl deep inside. Something is happening. Something bad.

Then the amplified voice of the Archivist rang out. What Obscurist magic it was, he couldn’t fathom, though Morgan likely would have known, but the voice of one man reached an entire city, and it was clear and eerily calm.

“Citizens of Alexandria, this is the Archivist of the Great Library. Be it known to you now that no Burner shall be left alive in our great and ancient city. No criminal smuggler shall be left alive to deal in forbidden books. No quarter will be given those who seek to destroy the safety and security of thousands of years. We have been merciful. I tell you now, we will not be merciful again.

“To that end the High Garda is now marching on hidden sites in our city to rout Burners and criminals from their holes and destroy utterly any trace of their existence. There will be damage. There will be innocent lives lost. But we believe in the greater worth of the Library. Knowledge is all!”

As Jess heard those around him devoutly repeat it, he saw that one of the troop carriers, with a phalanx of running automaton lions, was heading in their direction.

He turned to the servants. “Get out of here!” he shouted, and grabbed the chef’s arm as she started to obey. “Wait. Where’s Red Ibrahim?”

“Who?”

“Don’t waste my time, woman. Where is he?”

She gave him a long look, and he felt something sharp prick his stomach. He looked down to find a wickedly well-used knife resting there. “Take your hand off me. The master of the house is gone. There’s only us inside.”

“Then, leave,” he said. “And warn him. Tell him to go to ground, now—”

The words died in his throat, because he caught something from the corner of his eye and turned his head to look. There was still a knife threatening to gut him, but in that moment, it no longer mattered. Cold filled his veins, froze his spine, and he heard the chef whisper, “What in good Heron’s name is . . .” She fell silent, then let out a scream, backed up, and ran.

Jess didn’t move. Couldn’t. His brain struggled to make sense of the size of it, the eerie beauty of it, as the sleek, serpentine shape rose on beating wings. That isn’t possible.

They’d built a dragon.

The entire city was screaming. He heard the panic coming in waves as the dragon rose and circled in lazy spirals, banking and turning. It was a nightmare. It was deeply wrong. It was beautiful.

And then it came down.

The part of his mind that was frozen, clinical, trying to understand . . . it noted that this monster descended like a hawk, a swift, brutal, eerily silent descent. It had claws and talons, and it landed on the street at the end of the block. And the scale of it . . . He had never imagined anything could be built so large, so vividly and horribly swift. A snakelike neck stretched up as high as a three-story building to support a head shaped like that of an ancient, brutal dinosaur, if such had been made of clouded steel. Spiked, razor-sharp teeth. And the body: a hissing, whispering marvel of interlocking-plate scales, iridescent in the bright sunlight.

Its eyes glowed dark yellow, and there was no mercy in them. No thought.

Everyone near him was gone now, running for their lives. Houses had emptied. And the dragon’s talons clashed on stone as it lowered its head and breathed down a thick, green fog into the street.

Jess had time to taste that bitter, poisonous tang in the back of his throat before his lungs convulsed into coughs, and he found himself falling to his hands and knees trying to find clearer air. That’s the stench of Greek fire. He’d seen that mist build up in Philadelphia, clouding the air until it all ignited at once . . . and then he realized that the Library had taken note of it, too. First the mist, then the fire, he thought, and lurched up to his feet again to run. He couldn’t see where he was going; the rancid fog stung and blurred his vision, but he knew he was still on the road, feeling cobbles under his feet. He could hear the metallic hiss and clank of the automaton behind him, but how far, where . . .