Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(95)

“Morgan? Morgan!” Annis was shaking her, and when Morgan opened her eyes, she saw the older woman’s face was tense with worry. “Lass, are you all right?”

“Yes,” Morgan said. She wasn’t, she trembled all over, and the emptiness inside her threatened to eat her alive. She pictured locking it away, behind door after door after door, until she could draw a breath. It sustained her body, at least, if nothing else. “Yes. Give me the Codex.”

Annis retrieved the book from the table where they’d been working and opened it in front of her. Morgan picked up the pen. Her hand was unsteady, but she wrote down three words in ancient Greek.

“That’s all?” Annis frowned. “How is that going to get us anywhere? Is that a title?”

“No,” Morgan said. “It’s the words for the Scribes to find. Those three, together. That should tell us which book.”

“You’re having the Scribes search for it?”

“Yes.”

Annis sank into a chair. Her mouth opened and closed as she worked it through, and then she said, “That’s brilliant.”

“Only if it works,” Morgan said. She was still trembling, but less so with every breath. I can keep it under control, she told herself. I won’t give in to it. But the other side of that coin was that until she did give in and swallow the energy of other living creatures, she would be as powerless as any normal person walking the streets of Alexandria. Corrupted. That was what she’d been called, back in Philadelphia, and she had to believe that it wasn’t true, that it was something she could overcome. Use carefully.

I will not hurt Annis. I will not.

Annis had no idea of the danger she was in. She put her hand on Morgan’s shoulder, and Morgan flinched at the contact. The power she needed was right there, hovering just beyond her skin . . .

“Look!” Annis leaned closer to the Codex. “It’s writing!”

A single entry was written in precision-perfect penmanship. Morgan could picture the automaton on the other end making the loops and lines, an unthinking and perfect machine.

“On the Practical Effects of Advanced, Multiple-Source Familiarity Formulae and the Energy Exchange Principle,” Annis read. “My God, you’ve found it.”

“I hope,” Morgan said. “Get it.”

Annis pressed a finger to the title and held a Blank close. As they watched, the empty pages of the Blank filled with cramped, archaic script, a perfect copy of the original volume locked away in the Archives. The product of an obscure, long-forgotten Scholar whose name Morgan didn’t even recognize.

As they turned pages, a glowing corner of a page caught her eye, and she quickly flipped to it.

There, on the page, was the answer they’d been looking for.

“The Iron Tower’s security keys,” Annis said. She sounded quiet, and almost shaken. “Morgan. This is the answer. This is what we need to open the doors, remove the collars. To let us all . . . leave.” Annis’s eyes filled with tears, and she looked lost now. “I thought—until this moment, it was just an idea, you understand. A puzzle to solve. But this . . . this is real. This is . . .”

Morgan heard the footsteps approaching before Annis did, and quickly wiped the Blank and cleared the Scribe’s writing in the Codex. The other books weren’t incriminating, but this one . . . this was.

“Oh, hello,” said Bjorn, a lean older man with a sharply pointed face. Morgan knew him slightly, but he wasn’t someone she came into contact with on anything like a regular basis. Maybe it’s nothing, she told herself. Bjorn’s energy flooded the room, far brighter and more compelling than Annis’s, and she felt the locks breaking on her resolve. If I just take a little . . .

No. As desperate as she was, as empty, she knew she wouldn’t be able to siphon just enough. She had no idea how it would feel to another Obscurist, but she thought it would be painful. Agonizing, very possibly. And she couldn’t do that, not to an innocent person.

“Hello,” Annis said. She, at least, seemed instantly at ease. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite musician. I haven’t heard you play in weeks. What on earth has kept you away? Please tell me it’s not a new lover.”

“You know you’re the only one for me,” Bjorn said, and winked at her. His smile seemed wrong to Morgan, but then, everything did now. She was fighting her own darkness, and it seemed to crowd in from everywhere. “No, I’ve been on a special project, my crimson witch. The new master wanted something special done.” He shrugged. “Some sort of new flying automaton. Don’t really see the point, honestly.”

“Flying?” Morgan forced herself back into some sort of focus. “Is it a new model completely?”

“Don’t know and don’t care. My part of it was just the gravitational formulae. Devilishly tricky, by the way. I must have destroyed a hundred scrolls before I got it right, and then it had to fit with all the others.”

“Others?”

“Navigational, and some kind of fire formula. Specialist work, all of it. Oh, Gregory supplied a rough master formula, but believe me, it took weeks to get the details—”

A new automaton, just in time for the Feast of Greater Burning. Morgan felt sick and dizzy and most of all, out of time. She looked half-desperately at Annis, who couldn’t have understood the half of what was going through her mind, but Annis was, if nothing else, emotionally perceptive. She walked to Bjorn, took his arm, and said, “Why don’t you tell me all about it, my love, over a tall glass of something that will make the evening better?”