Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(76)

Instinct told him, Run, just run, it doesn’t matter, run!

Jess ran, blinded, as fast as he could go, until he tasted clearer air, and then he dashed a hand over his eyes and tried to see where he was.

He’d come dangerously close to falling over a curb and impaling himself on an iron fence, but he was near the farther end of the street now, and he dared to slow down and try to look back.

Just as he did, a spark ignited in the cloud, and for an instant he’d never forget, the fog of Greek fire glowed like a beautiful, fragile network of green lace, suspended in the air . . .

. . . and then everything in it exploded.

The houses. The street. Fences. Fountains, weeping flames.

A green bubble of hell.

Stones melted. Houses collapsed. If anything lived inside that fog, it was incinerated to the bones. The servants? The chef? What about the others on the street—did they get out in time?

Jess let out a raw scream, because he was in Philadelphia again, seeing the bombs fall and lives lost, and it was happening here, in Alexandria, and for what? For what? To punish the Burners? Red Ibrahim?

No. To terrify. To show the city that the Archivist would not allow any opposition.

The wail of the alarm started again, and from inside the inferno came a chilling, answering roar, and the dragon launched itself up. It trailed streamers of fire behind it, nightmarish curls that writhed and twisted into black smoke. The automaton was streaked with soot and ash, but it was intact. Eerily alive.

It circled the sky over the city, and the threat was as clear as the sun in the sky: you are all one breath away from death now.

Jess found himself sitting now, clinging to the iron fence; it felt hot, and he realized that his clothes were giving off little curls of wispy smoke. His skin felt dry and hot, and he wearily got to his feet and walked on through falling ash and the eerie wail of the alarm until he saw the troop carrier that had been headed toward his street.

It was parked at the top of the hill, and four automaton lions waited, pacing.

Nowhere else to go, he thought, and kept walking. He coughed and tasted the bitter aftertaste of the fog. Spat out a thick mouthful of greenish phlegm and nearly collapsed with the force of another convulsive series of coughs.

When he finally straightened, the lions had surrounded him, and as one, they growled and showed teeth when he tried to move forward.

“I wouldn’t,” said a light, calm voice. “You’re Jess Brightwell, are you not?”

For a split second, he nearly answered yes, but he caught it just in time and said, “For the thousandth time, no. I’m his twin, Brendan, and for God’s sake, can’t you get that into your thick skulls? What the hell was that thing?”

“Take him,” the voice said. “He’s the one we want.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX




Jess didn’t bother to ask where he was being taken. He assumed that he would be taken back to his cramped little prison, to wait there on the Archivist’s pleasure, but he couldn’t shake the horror of what he’d just seen. War was one thing; it was horrible and brutal, but there were rules, or at least there should be. He’d been trained as High Garda. Where was the duty and honor in what had just happened? Where was the benefit to knowledge? Had any of those people ever threatened the Great Library? This was the Library’s own city. The Archivist was making war against his own people.

He didn’t recognize any of the soldiers who sat silently around him. They wore the uniform of High Garda Elite, which he supposed wasn’t surprising. He wondered how many more the Archivist had in reserve. And he wondered if it would do any good to tell them just how faithless the man was whom they were so faithfully obeying.

The soldier sitting next to him coughed and sent him a scowl. “You stink,” the man said. “Smells like Greek fire and cat piss.”

“Quiet,” said a commanding voice from down the row. “You’ve smelled worse than that on many a day, and I doubt you have his excuse. Leave him alone. He’ll get what’s coming to him soon enough.”

The soldier subsided, but the look he was giving Jess was pure loathing. Jess hardly even noticed. In every blink of his eyes he saw that street aflame, and the bodies in it. His hands were shaking and suddenly the stench that the soldier had commented on was all too real and suffocating.

He didn’t much notice the trip at all, but suddenly he realized that they’d stopped and soldiers were pouring out of the open door. The hostile soldier next to him grabbed him by his shackled wrists and heaved him up; Jess was forced to rise or have both shoulders dislocated. He didn’t much mind the pain. At least it gave him something to focus on.

This wasn’t his little house. He recognized this bare courtyard, with its view of the Lighthouse in the distance. It was a rally point for High Garda troops, and the huge sweep of the Serapeum rose into the sky above them. The whole courtyard was full of soldiers. Some wore the Elite uniform, but most wore the same as the one he’d worn with such pride just months back. Loyal men and women. Jess wondered whom they had been told they were fighting. Burners and rebels most likely. He wondered if any of them harbored any doubts.

As before, he was led through a maze of tunnels. He recognized part of it, but that part had belonged to another route before. It confirmed what he’d suspected—that the building itself was an automaton in some sense. Its defenses started with the confusion of its ever-changing corridors, a defense Jess wasn’t sure he understood or could outwit, at least not yet. Right now, there was nothing in this world he wanted more than to be out of here, even if there was nowhere else to go. He was too heartsick to play games and too angry to pretend any longer. If he had the chance, he intended to kill the Archivist any way he could. It might not stop that dragon from flying again, but at least it was something.