Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(103)

Then he was able to breathe a little, and the fog parted. He blinked and focused. Morgan was kneeling over him. And Wolfe. Glain stood apart, staring down.

“You didn’t even let us say it,” Jess managed to whisper.

“In bocca al lupo,” Morgan said. Her voice was gentle, her eyes full of grief. “The wolf hasn’t eaten you yet, Jess. I’ve helped you a little, but . . .”

“But you can’t save me,” he said. “I know. It’s all right.”

The walls above him looked familiar. So did the looming bulk of a desk. Gods in niches.

They were in the Archivist’s old office, and Jess felt a sudden shock of horror. The smell. The acrid, awful smell of the gas was everywhere. “Poison!” he gasped. “Get out!”

“It’s no longer effective,” Morgan said, and wrinkled her nose. “It’s foul-smelling, but that’s the worst of it. The part that made it so dangerous can only survive for an hour before it breaks down. I read the account in the Black Archives. We’ll be all right.”

Wolfe turned to Morgan. “Can you tell if the old man has been here?”

Morgan nodded. Her eyes were closed, but when she opened them Jess saw that shimmer again. Unearthly and wrong. “He has,” she said. “But he’s gone. I don’t know where he is now. We should get to Khalila, quickly.”

Jess tried to get up, but he couldn’t. The smell of the gas made him feel sick and weak all over again. He coughed and concealed the blood by hacking it onto his sleeve. Dark cloth concealed everything.

Wolfe checked the time. “She may be in the prayer room. There’s one set aside in the Serapeum near the conference room where I last saw her. Can you locate her? Or Dario?”

“Yes,” Morgan said. “But”—she looked at Jess—“he can’t come with us.”

“I know,” Jess said. “I’ll follow.” That was a lie. He had nothing left.

Morgan put a gentle hand on his brow, and he was shocked at how cold it was. Or how feverish he felt. He didn’t know which of them was worse at the moment. “Stay here,” she said. “Please.”

He couldn’t do anything else. His lungs were a ruin of pain, every breath agonizing. Blood bubbled at the back of his throat. I’m coming apart.

He didn’t want to die in the Archivist’s office. After all this, not here.

Wolfe said, “I’ll stay—”

“No,” Jess gasped. He managed to sit up and put his back against the desk. Smiled. “No, Scholar. Go. I’m all right. Just go!”

Wolfe’s face told him everything he needed to know about how painful the decision was, and how inevitable.

His friends left him behind. He was glad. This wasn’t something he wanted any of them to see.

He coughed out a mouthful of blood onto the carpeting and realized that it was already stained. Neksa’s blood? She’d died here. Then he frowned, because he clearly remembered that the Archivist had replaced that carpet. He touched the stain, and his fingers came away bright red.

Fresh blood. And not his own. What could that mean? Had someone caught the Archivist here and been injured or killed for their trouble?

Jess pulled himself up and followed the drops of blood across the carpet to the silent automata gods. There was a bright pool of crimson at the feet of Anubis, as if someone gravely wounded had been here and . . . touched what? He looked at everything twice and finally saw a smear of blood on the flail in the god’s hand. He touched it. Nothing happened. He wrapped his hand around it and tried to pull it. That wasn’t right, but he felt it give slightly.

He turned his wrist and twisted.

The god stepped down and away from the opening, and the panel behind him slid open. Jess watched the automaton closely, ready to dodge should Anubis use that flail . . . but it seemed passive. He stepped up onto the pedestal and through the open doorway.

Anubis climbed back up to its former position. The door slid closed again.

Jess turned to see . . . a library. A room full of books, rich with the smell of aging paper, leather bindings. A hint of dust. Just the kind of room he would pick to die in, he thought, and felt a flicker of relief. He could feel the end coming. And this was a good place for it, at last.

The library was full of originals. Illegal, hoarded originals, just like home. The irony of it tasted bitter as the tainted blood at the back of his throat.

There was an old man in a chair, and he was bleeding all over the brown leather.

“Well,” the old Archivist said. “I see that neither of us has outrun our destinies, Brightwell.” He laughed a little, and gasped. His face turned the color of the palest of papers, so pale Jess could almost see the sharp lines of the skull beneath. “Irony of ironies. I came to die in the company of my oldest friends, and here you are. I can’t seem to get rid of you.”

“What happened?” Jess asked.

“Do you really care?” The Archivist smiled a little, but it failed after an instant. “Going to call someone? Medica? High Garda? An executioner? I fear you’re too late.”

“Who did it?”

“In the end? Zara managed one last shot as I was leaving,” he said. “I stretched her loyalty too far. ‘’Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.’”