Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(92)

“Including the dragon,” Zara said. “I saw it myself. It’s a nightmare—breathes toxic gas that catches fire, and it can rend with teeth and claws, too. Armored and fast. I can’t think of anything that could take it down. The sphinxes are bad enough, but this . . .”

Dragon. Wolfe hadn’t seen it for himself, had only heard Jess’s description . . . but it had sounded like a nightmare, indeed. His mother never would have agreed to such a thing . . . or perhaps she had. Perhaps it had been in the works for a very long time and required only Gregory’s eagerness to ingratiate himself to make it a reality.

“We have something that can bring it down,” Santi said. “Thomas’s weapon. The Ray of Apollo.”

“You have it?” Zara’s eyes widened. “I thought it was destroyed in the escape from Philadelphia.”

“He built another one. A better one,” Wolfe said. “But we had to leave it in England. Unless somehow you worked a miracle, Nic?”

“No chance to,” Santi said, and settled in a chair beside Wolfe. “We were chained and put on board the ship the same night. As far as I’m aware, Jess’s father has the thing, and Thomas’s pet lion, too.”

“He might regret that last thing,” Wolfe said. “I don’t think Thomas told it to obey any of them, did he?”

“No,” Santi agreed. “He didn’t. With any luck, maybe they’ve shut it up in the workshop and not got their hands on the weapon, either.”

“We can hope.”

Santi looked at the clock, and Wolfe saw the flicker of doubt. Their children—and he would always think of them as their children; he’d given up on anything else—were late returning, and that was almost certainly not good news. “I could take a team out and look for them,” Nic said.

“No,” Wolfe said.

“He’d be safe enough inside the carrier,” Zara said. “I can get a picked team together, Captain.”

“No,” Wolfe said again, and speared Zara with a glare. “You won’t. We wait.”

Santi launched himself out of the chair and paced to the back of the room. He was pouring a glass of wine, but that, Wolfe thought, was just a thing to do instead of arguing.

“You push him, Scholar,” Zara said. She, too, was watching Santi. “I don’t think you understand how much he endures for you.”

“You really think I don’t?”

She swung her gaze back at him. As flat and alien as a tiger’s. “I don’t think you know how much he hurts for your sake. But . . . he loves you. And needs you.”

“And you,” Wolfe said, though it hurt to say it. “You keep him moving forward when he wants to turn back. He told me that once. When he thinks too much of me, you make him think about the goal.”

“He always thinks too much about you,” she said. “It’ll be the end of him someday, Scholar. It’s up to you to look after him.”

Wolfe watched her stand up and leave; he wasn’t sure how to respond to that, or if he should. Santi hadn’t heard. He came back and settled in the chair he’d left, sipped some of the wine, and handed it over to Wolfe. “What do we do if they don’t come back?” he asked.

“We go to the Feast of Greater Burning, and we do what we can,” Wolfe said. “And tomorrow, we’ll probably die. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do,” Nic said. Wolfe drank the rest of the wine; it was a thick marvel of a red, better than he’d tasted in years. The Spanish had a way with grapes.

“Did you tell your company to fight with us or to stand down?”

“I told them to act according to their conscience. What else could I tell them? I’m not even their captain, not anymore. I have no rank. No career. Nothing.”

“Do you blame me?” Wolfe asked quietly. He put the cup down, and when he straightened again, he had Santi’s full focus on him.

“No,” Santi said. A harsh word, but it came gently, and with love. “I don’t. Ever. What I’ve done, I’ve done because it needed to be done, and I accept whatever comes of it. Amore mio, I’ll find a place in the world, if we live through tomorrow. Don’t concern yourself with that.”

Wolfe grabbed for his hand and held it, closed his eyes, remembered the horror of the nights in the prison when he’d imagined Santi in such detail, such life, to keep it all at bay. But that fantasy had been nothing compared to the reality of having him here, seeing that smile.

Something tugged at him, and for a second he felt a bubble of panic surface. Some memory clawing to the surface, something from the prison.

Then he remembered, and a flinch ran through him. I came so close to losing my mind. So close.

“What is it?” Santi asked, and moved closer. “Chris?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I— One night in the prison, I imagined something. Someone, actually. It seemed so real.”

“Someone?”

“Him,” Wolfe said, and could hardly hear his own voice. “From Rome. Qualls.”

Santi went still. “The torturer.”

Wolfe nodded. “I think it was just . . . my brain, playing tricks. He isn’t here. He left the Archivist’s service, didn’t he? Retired far from here.”