Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(87)

And Red Ibrahim was taking aim at Jess’s head.

Jess dropped just before the shot came, and felt a hot burn along his scalp as it only just missed. His brother was moving, too, a blur in the air beside him, and he instinctively rolled to his right to put room between them. Red Ibrahim would think he’d hit his target, at least for an instant, and Jess used that instant to set his feet and launch himself straight at the man.

He hit Red Ibrahim squarely, and the gun tumbled free as they both fell backward to the floor at the feet of the statue. Jess reached for it, but it put him off-balance, and quick as a striking cobra, Red Ibrahim flipped him on his back and pinned him there with a sharp right knee on his upper arm and a left knee compressing his chest. The older man caught Jess’s left hand as he launched it in an attack and twisted it down at a painful angle. The gun was out of reach now of both of them; Red Ibrahim would have to shift his weight to get it, and Jess was alert for any hint of that.

But Ibrahim simply drew a knife and reached to cut Jess’s throat.

The scream and shot came simultaneously, and for a confused second Jess was sure that the statue of Laverna had moved and punched a red hole through Ibrahim’s skull . . . but that wasn’t right. Ibrahim’s eyes went wide and surprised, and then blank. His weight slithered bonelessly to fall heavily away, and Jess finally put the pieces together: the spray of blood on the white marble of the goddess’s statue, the shot, the scream.

And he turned his head toward where the gun had been and saw Anit kneeling there, trembling, as the gun fell to the floor. It bounced close to him, and he grabbed for it and came up to his knees just in time to see that Brendan was against a column and the man holding him was about to stab him in the heart.

Jess fired, and the man staggered back and sprawled full length on the floor. He crawled for a few seconds, then went still.

Brendan looked up, panting. His face was bloody, and his knuckles dripped crimson, but he nodded to Jess, and Jess nodded back.

What did we just do?

Brendan pulled Jess to his feet, wiped the thick track of blood from the side of his face, and went to Anit, who was still on her knees, hands resting limply on her thighs. The girl—child, really, she was far from old enough for this—stared at her fallen father, and then she looked up at the two of them with tears shimmering in her eyes. “I couldn’t—I— He was going to—” She suddenly covered her mouth with both hands, and a wail burst out of her, only a little muffled by the cover. “No, no, Father—”

“Anit?” Jess got her attention, slowly. “Anit, why . . .”

Her hands were trembling badly. When she lowered them from her mouth, he took them in his. Cold as ice. But when she answered, her voice was steadier than he expected. “He betrayed you,” she said. “He betrayed your father, too; he took the money from the Archivist. He broke the oaths. I had no choice.” She swallowed. “He would have killed you both. I couldn’t—” She shook her head and didn’t finish, but Jess understood.

He understood what they owed her.

“We can’t leave her,” Jess said. “She’ll have to come with us.”

“Come with us where, exactly? Whatever protection Red Ibrahim could have offered, it’s gone now; his men will be fading into the night as quickly as they can, if they don’t come looking for us to settle the score . . .” Brendan’s calculations finally added up to what Jess’s already had, and he looked at Anit with new speculation. “Or . . . we take her with us. She knows the operation. She has her father’s codes and secrets. And however loyal his men are, they won’t attack if we have her.”

Much as Jess didn’t like to think about it as keeping Anit hostage, his brother was right. Besides, leaving Anit for her father’s guards to discover would be cruel. She’d confess in a heartbeat, and they’d kill her for what she’d done . . . at least, unless she found her center and power very quickly. Right now, that seemed unlikely. She needed time to recover and regroup.

Jess helped the girl up. “Come on, Anit,” he said. “We’ll take you somewhere safe.”

“I killed my father. Do you think there’s safety from that?”

“We’ll keep you safe until you’re ready,” he said, and she turned and looked at him. The glassy shock over her eyes cracked, and what bled through was fury.

“I wish I’d never met you,” she said. “Any of you!”

“You’re not the first to say that,” Brendan said. “But you’re the one who killed your da, not us. You should be thinking of yourself. Do you have somewhere else to go?”

She broke free of Jess. For a second he thought she meant to take the gun, and he quickly switched it to stun; he had no desire to kill her, no matter what she might do. But she just pulled away and ran back to her father.

Jess glanced at his brother, and Brendan returned it, but neither of them followed her. She knelt down and posed her father’s body: arms crossed on his chest like the pharaohs of old, legs straight, robe perfectly neat. Last, she unwound the red silk scarf she wore around her throat and placed it over his closed eyes.

“We don’t have time for this,” Brendan muttered.

“Make time,” Jess said. “She saved my life, and I saved yours because of it.”

Anit prayed for a moment, then kissed her father’s still lips and said, “Anubis, guide him to his rest. Forgive me, Father. But you were wrong. You have been wrong since you betrayed what we believe for the Archivist’s gold.” She reached into the fold of his robe and came out with a red velvet case. Then she stood up, turned, and looked at both of them. “Come on,” she said. “I saved your lives because it suits my purposes. No use if all of us die here.”