Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(112)

“I’m a Scholar, Jess. And I’ll continue to act like one, despite my responsibilities.” She added her other hand on top of his. “You did all you could do. You and Thomas, you saved the Great Library, too. And I expect you will keep on doing that in whatever form you choose. Thomas has requested that a new Curia position be opened. He is calling it Liberius. Publisher, I believe that would be. It would oversee the installation of his printing machines, and I think he wants you to be part of that.”

That woke some warmth in places that had gone cold inside. Books. We’ll make books. He remembered the feel of an original, the hand-cut paper, the binding and stitching. We’ll sell them. Openly. To people who want to have them in their homes.

“No more raids?” he asked her. “The books will be legal to own?”

“Legal to own,” she said. “And that promise has made the Burners lay down their bombs, it seems. At least for now.”

“The Russians?”

“Withdrawn, and making peace now that the old Archivist is dead. The Spanish ambassador is petitioning to make a new treaty.” Her smile grew big enough to reveal dimples in her cheeks. “I’m keeping him waiting. A little.”

“That’s strategically wicked of you. I like it.” Books. Thomas had the authority to print real, original books. That . . . that would change the world, surely. It had certainly changed his. “I should get up. Get dressed.”

“No, you should not,” Khalila told him. “Save your strength. Your father wants to come to see you in the morning. But only if you agree, of course.”

“Might as well get it over with,” Jess said sourly. “Say a prayer for me, will you?”

“You are always on my list,” she said. She bent and planted a warm, gentle kiss on his cheek. “My brother.”

“Two sisters I never had. So strange.”

“Oh, I think you’ll find you have more siblings than you can handle.” She looked at the time. “I’m sorry to leave you, but I have a meeting with the kings of Wales and England, and I must make a decision about what to do with France; it’s ghoulish to continue to operate it as a memorial to our own power, and I’d like to hand it back to the rightful French citizens. But there are treaties to negotiate there as well. I’ll see you as soon as I can, Jess.”

She left, and six High Garda soldiers formed up around her at the doorway. He’d just been kissed farewell by the Archivist of the Great Library.

His life had gotten complicated.

He slept, woke, demanded a bath and a meal, and got them. When his parents arrived with the sun, they found Jess up and walking, if carefully and slowly.

Both his parents wore black. Jess accepted his mother’s silent embrace, and thought she looked sincerely worried about him.

Callum Brightwell didn’t bother with any pleasantries. He swept Jess with a look and said, “You seem better than I expected.”

“Thanks,” Jess said. “Don’t tell me you came all this way to smother me with parental love.”

“Jess,” his mother murmured. “We do love you.”

One of you might, he thought. But his mother had never stood up to his bully father, so that didn’t really count for much, either.

“We’re only here to claim Brendan’s body,” Callum said. “The damned High Garda won’t let us have him until you sign a release to allow it. Here.”

He thrust out a Codex, and Jess read the document inscribed on the page. An agreement allowing Callum Brightwell to take the body of Brendan Brightwell from where it lay in state in the Serapeum with the others who’d fallen in the conflict, and remove it for burial to England.

Jess said, without looking up, “Where are you going to bury him?”

“Does it matter to you?”

“Yes.”

“On a hillside on the castle’s grounds,” his mother said. “He liked it there. He sat sometimes to read and watch the sea.”

A lonely, windswept hillside in England. Maybe she was right; maybe it was what Brendan would have wanted. He didn’t know. They’d never talked about it. Never thought it could happen.

Jess closed the Codex. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

His father’s face flushed a deep, ugly red. “No, you’ll do what you’re told. He’s lying dead inside that great bloody pyramid because of you! The least you can do is let me get him decently buried and not gawped at by half the librarians in the world—”

“Honored, you mean. By people who loved him.”

“Don’t you dare, boy. I loved Brendan—”

“More than me, yes, I know.”

“Sign the form!” His father’s fist was clenched. Jess watched it, but he wasn’t afraid. Or surprised. He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to fight the old man—or, at least, to win—but he’d damn well try.

It caught him by surprise when his mother stood up and said, in the sharpest voice he’d ever heard from her, “Leave him alone, Callum!”

It seemed, from the look on his face, that his father had never heard that tone, either. “What?” He recovered smoothly. “This isn’t your business. This is between—”

“Shut up,” she said. “I’ve had more than enough of your cruelty and arrogance. I will not let you do it a moment longer. Not to my last child. Go away.”