Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(29)

It took every scrap of strength he had to leave.

And he knew he’d regret it. Fiercely.





EPHEMERA



Excerpt from the personal diary of Obscurist Morgan Hault. Archived to the Codex under interdict until her death.


I think I’ve been in love with being in love.

Does that even make sense? I care for Jess, of course. He saved me, and I’ve saved him in return; we’re welded together in ways I can’t even begin to explain. But am I in love with him? I keep circling that question, but it remains just out of reach. I’d like to be in love with him. I want it. But . . . what happened in the Colosseum feels like an ending.

What’s happened to us, been done by us and to us . . . it’s changed us both. I am by turns exhausted, elated, terrified, dreadfully bored. Wild swings that hold no peace. And when I think of Jess . . . I realize that I think of him as comfort. But is love comfortable? I don’t know. It feels like something’s missing between us now.

Here I am, scribbling in my journal about love, while the world burns around me . . . but maybe that is what I ought to do. Maybe, in the end, love is all we have left, in peace or in war, to make the surviving worthwhile.

The Obscurist Magnus is calling for me. I must go. Another hard day ahead.

I hope that we survive it.





CHAPTER FIVE





MORGAN

Morgan sipped bitter, cooling tea and fought back a yawn. Her whole body felt on fire with exhaustion, and her eyes were starting to refuse to focus. But the documents that lay before her on the table were starting—ever so slowly—to give up their secrets, and she couldn’t stop now.

Being exhausted could wait.

But if she could just rest her eyes for a moment . . .

“Morgan? Can you make out this part?”

She yanked herself awake, startled, and leaned forward. In doing so she nearly knocked heads with Thomas Schreiber, who sat across from her at the table. “Sorry,” she said, and tried to get her concentration back. Predictably, he’d hardly noticed the near impact, so intent was he on the page in front of them. Thomas wasn’t tired. He put a large but precise finger on a tiny line of faded Greek.

“There,” he said. “Does that talk about the width of the chain?”

“Yes,” she said, “but we already know the width of the chain. Finding the chain isn’t the issue; that’s clearly marked on the current maps. The problem is how to repair the mechanism that winds it. There’s no information here on how to open the casing. No information anywhere, in any of the records.”

“True. But there is this.” He moved his finger farther down the page to a string of symbols she’d read and dismissed.

“It doesn’t even make sense,” she said. “Unless my ancient Greek’s worse than yours . . . ?”

“Not worse. Just different,” he said. “This is shorthand among engineers. It may not make sense to anyone outside of the field, but we still use some of these notations. I believe these are instructions for opening the casing, but it can’t be done by one person, or even two; it’s at the bottom of the harbor, for one thing. The ancients must have had automata to do this task; do the Obscurists have any record of them? The Artifex engineers must have partnered with Obscurists to make and maintain them.”

Morgan’s weary frustration turned to a sweet thrill of realization. “Yes! Or, at least, it’s discussed as possible in some of the texts; I don’t remember any of them describing the exact automaton used, only that it functioned underwater. It would need the two of us working closely together. I would have to bond you directly to the automaton; you’d see through its eyes and use its hands as your own. But I’m not so certain that any automata we have in Alexandria now can do that sort of fine mechanical task.”

“Scribes?” he suggested. The mechanical Scribes were able to write, so it seemed a logical enough question, but Morgan shook her head. She held up her hands and flexed her fingers.

“The Scribes’ hands are made to hold a pen and reduce movement,” she said, “to facilitate speed in writing. They don’t even have functional legs to stand on. But . . .” She hesitated. It seemed faintly sacrilegious to suggest. “The hands of many of the god automata are fully articulated. They’d have the strength necessary and be able to move in the ways we’d need. What do you think?”

“I think there could be nothing more appropriate than to press one of our gods into the service of saving this city,” he said. “Which one?”

Morgan considered it carefully. None of the automata she knew of were built to survive water for long, but it didn’t have to be a particularly long job. Or so she hoped. An hour, no more. “One of the larger ones,” she said, “in case we need leverage. This mechanism is bound to be very rusty.”

“Not necessarily,” Thomas said. “Heron was a master at designing mechanisms meant to stand the test of time. He was known to plate certain components with platinum and palladium to combat rust.” He sat back and sighed, rubbing his neck. He looked thinner than she remembered, and more . . . honed, somehow, like a particularly keen knife. Then he smiled at her in that shy, distracted way he had, and it all melted away. He was Thomas. Still. “You’re tired.” He didn’t make it a question.