Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(91)

She stepped back with a gasp.

The hallway was silent. Whatever had happened here happened long enough ago that the prisoner—or body—was already gone, and only this silent evidence left.

She went back to the stairs and hurried down another flight, then another, with her heart beating so fast she thought she might fly apart . . . and then, with intense relief, she saw Glain rounding the lower floor and heading up toward her.

The relief didn’t outlast the look Glain gave her. They met on the landing, and Glain didn’t pause. She took Khalila’s arm and said, “Go, go, we have to go now.”

“Dario—” No. Not Dario. It couldn’t be.

“They have him,” Glain said. “Nothing I could do. I have to get you out before they lock the whole building and send sphinxes up to sniff us out. Move!”

Khalila wanted to protest. Wanted to argue. Wanted to stay.

But she knew Glain was right, and she knew that Dario would say the same. “Is he dead?” She didn’t want to know that answer, but she asked. She had to ask.

“No,” Glain said. “But we will be, if we don’t keep moving.”





PART ELEVEN





WOLFE





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE




“They’ll be all right,” Santi said, and Wolfe thought he sounded certain of it. Half an act, surely, but Wolfe nodded in agreement without entering into it. Nic had a rare talent for reading him, especially when his nerves were so raw. All he could do was hope the others weren’t as perceptive.

Not that there were any others left. Jess had hared off after his wild brother; Thomas had gone with the ambassador to look at the workshop facilities he’d been promised earlier. Glain, Dario, and Khalila . . . all risking their lives out there in the night.

And though he knew where Morgan was, he didn’t know how she was. Or if she’d made any progress at all toward her goal of taking the Iron Tower out of the Archivist’s arsenal. If she managed it—an enormous variable—then it would truly change the game completely. But so far, there’d been no word, no sign. The Codex and Blanks continued to carry on with their mundane tasks; out in the streets, word was that automata still roamed, stalked, and flew.

The one bright sign, according to Alvaro Santiago, was that the Translation Chambers seemed to be malfunctioning from Alexandria outbound. That, at least, was keeping the Archivist’s plans to seed his troops in Serapeums at a standstill . . . and if that was all Morgan accomplished, it was still a great deal.

So it was him, Santi, and Santi’s lieutenant Zara, who’d come to roost in the reading room in the chair that Khalila had left empty. She seemed confident, too. Perhaps it was a special class they taught at the High Garda officers’ school.

“Tell me everything that’s happened,” Wolfe said. “Seeing as the children aren’t here, you don’t have to feather the truth.”

“I wouldn’t, anyway,” Zara said. “And neither should you. They aren’t children any more than we are . . . not with as much as they’ve done and seen. Protect them, certainly. But don’t coddle them.”

“And I’ll thank you to not tell me how to behave around my own students.”

“They were your students. Not anymore. Now they follow you because they hero-worship you, not from any desperate urge to learn from you. You do realize that, don’t you?”

“Zara,” Santi said. The tone was a warning. Zara sighed and changed subjects.

“All right. Since you came back here, it seems that the hornets’ nest—which had already been kicked by the mess in Philadelphia—only buzzed and stung more. The Burners had been circumspect here, but within days of the news, they were organizing, recruiting, setting up cancerous little cells around the city. They staged public burnings of their journals, and a few suicides. When the High Garda cracked down, they retaliated with new attacks on the compound. A week ago, inked flyers began to appear all over the town—a few at first, then more and more. Combined with the rebellion in the provinces, the upstart kings and angry Scholars in the field . . . well, the Archivist has been struggling to put out more fires than he can safely handle.”

“Is it true the High Garda Commander resigned?” Santi asked.

“Resigned and turned in his gold band. He left for his family home, so I’m told. The new commander . . . he’s the Archivist’s ugly little puppet, and if he’s told to put the Archives to the torch, I’m sure he wouldn’t hesitate, though how many of his men would follow I don’t know. Enough, I suppose.”

“Any progress with the other captains?”

“Your name has currency still, and at least three-quarters of the High Garda captains would support you and, at the very least, stand down their troops. But the Elites?” She shook her head. “No chance. They swear personal loyalty to the Archivist now. Not to the Library. They’re five hundred strong, and they’ll fight every step.”

“That’s better than I’d hoped,” Santi said. “If we can have most of the High Garda refuse to act . . .”

“That leaves a good few thousand of them willing to cut our throats,” Wolfe finished sourly. “It’s not enough. We can’t rely on Scholars to fight our battles, though most of the Research Scholars I know have field experience. And we still have the automata to contend with.”