Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(104)

“Don’t you dare quote Shakespeare.”

“I like Shakespeare, boy. I like everything. I read everything. Well, have read. All new things are now behind me.” The Archivist reached out for a book and opened it—not one of the rare originals on the shelves, but a simple Blank. His fingers were bloody and shaking. “Can’t damage the books by staining them. I thought I’d read something familiar now, if I could. Would you load one for me?”

In this moment he was just an old man afraid to die. All that he’d been, all the cruelty and power and fanatical zeal, had been dropped somewhere on the other side of this door. He wanted comfort.

And he did not deserve it. Jess thought of Brendan, dying in his arms. Thought of Neksa murdered on this vile old dictator’s command, and the people killed in the arena he hadn’t even known. Thousands of deaths to hang around this man’s neck. Tens of thousands.

Including his own, because he knew the poison would get him yet. One last, fatal gift from the grave.

He opened his own Codex. “What do you want?”

“I think Aristotle’s Poetics. One of my favorites.”

Jess tapped the title and held the Codex to the Blank. Aristotle’s flowing Greek filled the pages, and the Archivist smiled a little. “I will be the last to read this book,” he said. “Isn’t that a great and terrible thing?”

“You mean, it’s the last thing you’ll read.”

“No,” the Archivist said, and met his eyes. Jess had been wrong. Pale, weak, dying, the old man was still himself. Still full of spiteful power, and something worse. “I will be the last to read Poetics. The last to read any of the books stored in the Great Archives. So it’s fitting that I will savor it before it’s gone.”

Jess’s mouth went dry. He remembered being a child, locked in a carriage with a madman who ripped pages from the world’s rarest book only to eat them. There was some of that evil pleasure in the Archivist’s eyes now. He enjoyed taking something out of the world. He intended to be buried with his possessions, like an ancient Pharaoh. Only the Great Archives never belonged to him.

“What have you done?” he blurted.

“Blame Archivist Nobel,” the Archivist said. “He never imagined a day when destroying the Great Library was a choice we could really make; he intended the system as a deterrent for any enemies willing to attack Alexandria. But that’s purely his lack of imagination. It only takes the will to act.”

Jess forgot his own weakness. He grabbed the old man by the front of his jacket and dragged him up and out of the chair, but the Archivist was deadweight, hardly able to stand. His head lolled drunkenly on his neck. He was bleeding so badly it fell like rain around him.

“This place is mine,” the Archivist said. He sounded faint and exhausted. “And I will take it back. I bind it in blood and ashes and flame. Tomorrow I will be gone, but so will the Great Library of Alexandria. It’s done, boy. It’s done.”

Jess let go and stepped back. He couldn’t comprehend what he was hearing.

“What have you done?” he asked again.

“I’ve killed it,” the man said. He smiled.

And then he collapsed.

Dead.





EPHEMERA



Excerpt from Brendan Brightwell’s personal journal, never transcribed into the Great Archives I had a dream once that I was an only child, and I woke up from it crying. I was just a wee lad then, and when Jess asked me why I was crying I hit him until he went away.

Because that was the moment I realized that although I thought I hated my brother, hated the whole idea of there being two of us identical on this earth . . . I couldn’t do without him, either. I needed him.

And, yes, I loved him.

By the time we were old enough to form these thoughts properly, and adult enough to talk about them, we weren’t really talking at all. Jess had turned bookish and hated everything about his life, including me. I can’t really blame him for it. Da had made our lives a living hell the whole time, and I’d been the one Da favored.

I wish I’d made things right.

I hope I still can someday.

I don’t want to be alone.





CHAPTER NINETEEN





KHALILA

Khalila was in midsentence when Dario burst into the conference room, a full dozen High Garda soldiers in his wake. She paused, shocked, and he sent her a quick, apologetic glance and turned to the soldiers. “Close the shutters and secure the doors,” he said. “No one comes in or out without my approval.”

“Hold!” Khalila said sharply. “Scholar Santiago doesn’t speak for me. What is this?”

“The old man is here,” Dario told her. She saw the very real worry in his eyes. “He means to kill you, querida, and I will not let that happen. These are Santi’s picked troops. They’re loyal.”

The Curia members—only three in the room just now—had come to their feet. Litterae Magnus Vargas had drawn a concealed High Garda weapon. And Khalila felt the cool reassurance of the dagger she kept strapped to her forearm. It was no defense against a bullet, but what was? She wore an armored jacket beneath her summer blue dress, and a thin layer of flexible mail under the hijab to protect her head. It was practical. It was not perfect.