Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(90)

Once inside the Lighthouse’s tower, she caught her breath and tried to slow her pounding heartbeat. Glain joined her just a moment later, and they took the winding stairs up to the first of their Scholars, a Medica named Parker. She was a commanding older woman with sweeping walnut hair, eyes the color of the open sea, and an attitude that Khalila could best liken to that of an angry, wounded lion. She took Wolfe’s letter, ripped it open with a sharply pointed fingernail lacquered crimson, and read the contents once rapidly, then twice slowly before she spoke. “Close the door,” she said without looking up. “Is he serious?”

“I assume you know Scholar Wolfe,” Khalila said. “Have you ever known him not to be?”

“Fair point. The man has the sense of humor of a corpse.” Scholar Parker drummed her fingernails on her polished black desk, then folded the letter again. “I heard that Wolfe had been thrown back into prison.”

“He’s free,” Khalila said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

“Do you know what’s in this?” She tapped the folded paper, and Khalila shook her head. “I’ve known Christopher Wolfe for ten years, and I’ve never known him to make wild claims, but he says he’s seen the Black Archives. That’s insane enough, but then he says—”

“That the Archivist ordered them burned,” Khalila finished quietly. “Tens of thousands of original, irreplaceable books. Yes. He’s telling the truth. I was there, too. I saw it happen. And it’s a horror I’ll never forget.”

“You’re one of his students.”

“Yes, Scholar.”

“So strange. I never thought Wolfe had the patience to teach, and if he did, that he’d be a terrible influence. But you seem more or less sane.”

“More or less,” Khalila agreed. “Scholar, I am not here to ask you for anything but an open mind. Scholar Wolfe has no doubt written what he believes; I know what I do. And if you believe that the Library is facing the worst moment of its existence . . . then please think on which side you’ll stand tomorrow. Think what you believe in, and what you want the Great Library to be not today, but tomorrow, and the day after, and for the next hundred generations. Because Scholar Wolfe and I don’t believe that it can continue down the path it is on. And if he’s written to you, I think he knows you don’t believe it, either.”

Scholar Parker said nothing, and there was no reading her expression. All it would take, Khalila thought, would be for that well-manicured hand to press the gold button on her desk and summon Lighthouse security, and this would end quickly, and badly . . . but Parker finally opened a drawer and dropped the letter into it. She closed it with a firm click of a lock engaging. “Do you know where I was born?” she asked, which seemed an odd question. Khalila shook her head. “I’m from the American colonies. We have a tendency to question authority. You may tell Scholar Wolfe that I’ll think about what he’s said . . . and tell him I wish him safety. Now you should go. I don’t imagine it’s very safe for you here.”

“It isn’t,” Khalila agreed, and got up from where she’d taken a seat. Glain was still beside the closed door, looking every inch a crisp, cool High Garda soldier. “Thank you.”

“Who else are you seeing?”

“I don’t think I should tell you that.”

Parker nodded. “Quite right. But if Scholar Yang is on your list, take him off. He’s been spouting the Archivist’s rhetoric for some months now, and it wouldn’t end well.”

Khalila felt a little hint of a chill. “Thank you,” she said again, and moved to the door.

As soon as they were in the curving hallway, Glain said, “Is Scholar Yang on your list?”

“Not mine,” Khalila said. “Dario’s. Go tell him. Go now.”



* * *





Khalila forced herself to trust that Glain would find him, and delivered her other ten letters, spending only a few moments with each recipient; a few she received immediate and positive indications from, and a few an alarming and glacial silence. Most were somewhere in the middle, cautiously noncommittal. If these are our best and most influential friends, then Allah protect us, she thought. She felt sick that she’d missed prayers and hoped that he would remember and understand her need. But soldiers didn’t pause in battle to pray, and neither could she.

As she left the last Scholar’s office on the fortieth floor, she consulted the Codex directory and found Scholar Yang’s office was only one floor below; she took the winding steps down, and as she opened the door to the hallway, she listened for any trouble.

She heard nothing. Nothing at all.

Scholar Yang’s office was sixteen doors down. He was a historian by inclination, or so she’d understood; surely a historian would understand better than anyone the risk of the Library hurtling blindly forward down this course. He would understand, she told herself.

She raised her hand to knock on the door, and as she did, she smelled something odd, and oddly familiar. The smell of sea air and stone, those were completely right, but that sharp, metallic scent . . .

She looked down and saw blood on the floor in a circle the size of her head. Hand-shaped smears of it, too, on the wall just to the right. The hem of her dress had fallen in the still-liquid pool, and as she stared, a thick red stain began working its way up through the fabric.