Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(86)

“No.” The old man bared rotten teeth, and Jess leaned back to avoid the smell of his breath. “He doesn’t want to see you. Ever. You helped destroy one of his operations and burned his house down. You killed ten of his people. You’re lucky I don’t spill your guts right now.”

“I didn’t kill anyone. I was a prisoner. And the dragon almost burned me along with the house.”

Brendan leaned forward and locked gazes with the old man. “You want to see your guts?” And Jess was suddenly aware that his brother held a knife under the table, pressed against the old man’s stomach—probably the man’s own knife, at that. Brendan always did have fast hands. “No more conversation. Get us to him or your last drink ends up on the floor the hard way.”

The man, who was assuredly not a drunk, stared at him a moment, then looked past them and whistled. A high, sharp sound that echoed through the room and cut conversation dead. All around them, dangerous-looking men and women pushed back their chairs and rose, and Jess sent his brother a glare. Just had to push it, didn’t you? “These young men want to go to the temple,” the old man said. “Let them make their supplications. It’s a night to get right with our gods, I think.”

Before either of them could draw breath, much less put up a fight, there were cloth bags jammed over their heads, and Jess felt a heavy blow and sharp, lancing pain at the back of his head . . . and then nothing.

He woke up with the bag being dragged off. The smell of dried lentils from the bag’s former contents made him sneeze, and that woke a headache the size of the Serapeum behind his eyes. Stupid, he thought, and tried to move his hands. Tied, of course. But as he pulled, he felt the bonds being sliced apart, and he was pulled to his feet. He found his balance and blinked away bleary tears.

He hadn’t expected to find himself actually in a temple, but that was where he was: the temple of the Roman goddess Laverna. Not a very well-frequented temple. Small, dusty, kept up more for appearances than for actual rites. He’d never visited it in Alexandria and was a little surprised to even see the goddess included here. He looked around and found Brendan standing next to him. The man who’d cut his bonds had moved off and was somewhere in the columned shadows behind them.

“Strange, isn’t it?” said the man standing a few feet ahead of them on the tiled floor. He was facing the graceful marble statue of the goddess, with a knife in her right hand and coins in her left. “The Egyptians never had a god of thieves. The Romans, on the other hand, not only had one but honored her as goddess of thieves, cheats, and plagiarists, and they even had a gate for her in Rome. I’ve seen it. Perhaps I’ll go to Rome after this. It’s a city that welcomes our brothers.”

He turned to look at them, and Jess knew him as his vision finally sharpened: Red Ibrahim. Anit’s father. The head of criminal enterprises, including book smuggling, here in Alexandria. He was a native of the city, and he had the shaved head of someone who might even aspire to be a priest . . . but his religion was more along the worship of Laverna. He was a hard man. A man who’d survived and flourished in the hardest place on earth to practice his trade. He’d lost two sons to it.

Before, Jess had faced him as a business ally, if not real family. But here, now, the feeling was very different.

“You shouldn’t have come to me,” Red Ibrahim said. “I have no mercy for traitors.”

“Hear us out,” Brendan said. “Please, Cousin. Our father—”

“Your father wants you home, immediately. Both of you. No more deals with the Archivist. No more playacting. Your place is with your family, and not here. Do you understand?”

“I’m going to kill the Archivist,” Brendan said. “And you are not stopping me.”

Red Ibrahim didn’t answer. He shook his head and turned to Jess. “Your brother is a fool, and he’s angry. I hope you are clearer of mind. I will see you taken to a ship and sent home, and you can forget about this place forever. The Archivist will win tomorrow, or not; your friends will achieve their goal, or not. But you will not be here to see it. I’m closing my operations in this city. Already, most of my people have set sail, or will today.”

“Rats,” Brendan said. “And the ship’s not sinking. It’s being set back on course.”

“We’re not going back to England,” Jess said. “Not until this is over. Run if you like. But first you’re going to help us.”

“Help you what? Overthrow the Archivist Magister of the Great Library? I’m not a fool, and you’re not a hero, young man. You should remember that, especially now. It will keep you alive.”

“Alive isn’t enough.”

Red Ibrahim shook his head. “Then this won’t matter. I’ll tell your father I tried. But he’d rather you never come home than you spill what you know to the Library. And I agree. You are princes of our underworld kingdom. And you can’t be taken alive.”

He reached under the flowing Egyptian robes he wore and came out with a High Garda pistol. Jess watched him thumb the selector switch from stun to kill, and time seemed to slow to a trickle as his senses expanded. There was another exit from this shrine, behind the goddess’s statue; he could see the glimmer of it on the dusty tiles. It meant going through Red Ibrahim to get to it, but that would have to be done. The accomplice behind them cut them off from that escape, and Jess could feel him moving up. He didn’t look, but he knew that man, too, would be armed. He was heading for Brendan’s back.