Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(108)

Morgan flinched and dropped the Codex. Her hands looked red, as if she’d been burned by it. She gasped and pulled them close to her chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice shook. “I can’t. I’m not even sure Eskander can do it. That’s something . . . the protections on those documents were done by someone much more powerful than I am. Or ever will be.”

Khalila took a deep breath and abandoned that hope. She cast about for an instant, then said, “Thank you for trying. Scholars, it has to be run by some kind of machine. Can the machine itself be stopped instead? Dismantled, perhaps?”

Santi looked at her. “I don’t know.”

“Then we’d better damn well try,” Wolfe said. He started to speak, then stopped and looked at Khalila. “Archivist?”

“Yes. We must find a way inside, locate the machine, and stop this from happening. There’s no time for anything else, if Thomas and Jess are both right.”

“Archivist, you can’t risk yourself—,” Santi started to say. Khalila turned to look at him.

“If I lose the Great Archives, there is nothing left to risk,” she said. “I don’t intend to lose them. I’m coming.”

Morgan said, “Hands,” and held hers out. This time, they didn’t hesitate, and Santi joined the circle.

All together now. Together at the end of things.

All except for Thomas. Where was he? What had happened to him? Jess hated not knowing. His friend needed help; that much was clear. And he couldn’t give it.

Translation.

Jess came through it alive, but he knew it would be the very last time he could endure it; his whole body felt twisted with the effort, and he resorted to his mask again to force air into his failing lungs. Morgan held his hand, and he knew she wanted to help him. He also knew that she couldn’t, not much. But maybe . . . just maybe . . . enough to get him through this.

After this didn’t really matter.

They stood inside the Great Archives. He knew this chamber; he’d been here before, a vast and vaulting space where he, Wolfe, and Morgan had ended up after Translating from his father’s estate. The beginning of this strange road they were running.

“Well, this should be easy,” Dario said as he looked around at the incredible size of the place. Impossibly, he’d retained a sense of humor. “Please tell me there’s a simple off button.”

“Quiet,” Morgan said. “Thomas is outside. I’m bringing him in.”

And in the next blink, there Thomas stood—smeared with ashes and dust and blood, ragged as if he’d been in a fight with a room full of knives, loaded down with two massive cases. He staggered and caught himself on a massive pillar.

“How—,” Thomas said, and checked what he was going to say. He looked at Morgan. “You brought me here.”

“You were at the door, arguing with soldiers,” she said. “I just . . . moved things along.”

Khalila nodded, smile sparking wide. “You’re alive!”

“Only just,” he said, and stepped forward to greet her—and then hesitated. “You’re wearing a crown. The Archivist’s crown.”

As if she’d forgotten, Khalila touched it where it sat atop her hijab. “At the moment,” she said. “But I’m still your friend, and I’m happy to see you, Thomas.”

Thomas nodded and looked at Wolfe. Santi. Glain. Dario. Last, at Jess. Jess felt something cold and knotted ease up inside him. They might all be doomed, but at least they were, for the first time in a while, together. And together, they were powerful.

“We don’t have much time,” Thomas said. “I’m sorry. Zara said that the Archivist was going to burn the Great Archives. We have to prevent that.”

“We know,” Wolfe said. “Alfred Nobel’s hideous fail-safe device. But we don’t know how to control it.”

Khalila said, “Perhaps the old man didn’t actually activate it . . . ?”

“No,” Morgan said. “He did. I can see the power gathering. But it takes time to charge.”

“Like the Ray of Apollo,” Thomas said. “The batteries have to be charged before the process can begin. We can still interrupt it.”

“How?” Wolfe demanded. “Where?”

Morgan pointed at each of the four distant wings of the building. “It’s gathering at the entrances to each of those openings. There must be some central control at each point. Something to relay the power on.”

Khalila had her Codex, and she read something from it. “The Senior Research Librarian of the Great Archives is unable to leave; he was injured and is in a Medica facility. But he confirms that there are four control points. There are manual shutoffs to each wing, in case maintenance had to be done. But he doesn’t know how to access them without opening a sealed document kept inside his office.”

“No time for that,” Morgan said. “The devices are inside something. Marble.”

“Under the floor?”

“No. Above it. Inside—” She suddenly smiled. “Inside the base of a statue.”

“There are statues of Zeus at the entrance to each of the wings,” Santi said. “In the base of those?”

“Yes.”

“How much time do we have left?” he asked.