Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(61)

But he couldn’t worry about that now.

It hurt—badly—but he rolled over the glass and on top of the stunned soldier nearest to him—the Slav—and brought his cuffed hands up and down in a precise slam that impacted the side of the man’s head. He was careful. He didn’t crush the man’s skull. But he doubted the fellow would be objecting to anything else for a fair few minutes. The impact cost him as well; sharp teeth sank deeper into his flesh, and blood slicked his wrists and dripped down his hands. As much as he tried to move them in tandem and not twist or struggle against the bonds, he could feel the things digging. Vile things. He hated the engineer who’d designed them.

The soldier he’d hit was out and limp. The other one was bleeding badly from a head wound, also unconscious. Thomas quickly skinned back that one’s uniform jacket sleeve and saw what he’d glimpsed before: a Great Library seal, but instead of being set into a bracelet, this was somehow grafted directly into the man’s skin. Interesting in an intellectual puzzle, but disconcerting in the real world. Thomas gritted his teeth and touched the shackles to the man’s skin seal, and felt the biting teeth of the restraints retract. The manacles clicked open.

Thomas used them on the soldier, who was starting to come around, then thought about that seal. No, better not to chance the restraints at all on him.

“Kiril!” That shout came from outside. The driver, coming back. “Are you all right?”

Thomas didn’t look at his own wrists, though they were still bleeding; he assumed the flow of blood would be far worse if he’d severed veins. He grabbed both guns, stuck one awkwardly in his waistband, and checked the settings on the one he still held. He changed it to lethal.

While he was about that, the driver looked into the window.

Thomas aimed right at her face, and the woman flinched and dropped out of sight. Hopefully, she’d run away.

Time to go, Thomas thought. He shoved the pistol in his waistband and stretched up to grab the sides of the window. Glass crunched under his palms, and on the left side there was enough left to slice. He hardly felt it at the moment. No time. He heaved himself up and out, rolling off and down to his feet. He was not as fast or as graceful as some of his friends, but he was fast enough; the driver backed away, her niqab rippling in the strong breeze.

She was holding a gun.

“Don’t make me,” Thomas said, and he drew one of the pistols from his belt—the lethal one—and aimed. She hesitated, then dropped her gun to the ground. “Where were you taking me?”

Thomas stepped away from the carriage. The boiler’s hissing seemed unlikely to result in explosion, but better to be safe.

The woman didn’t respond, but she warily backed away from him.

He heard the scrape of footsteps behind him. More than one set. Several.

“Drop the pistols, Scholar,” a calm voice said. “How exactly did you destroy the carriage? I’d like to know, for the future.”

He slowly bent and put the weapon on the ground, dropped the other one still in his waistband, then turned to face her. “Zara Cole,” he said. “The traitor.”

Zara didn’t seem nearly as tired or stressed as she should have been, he thought. Her fine dark eyes were clear, no shadows beneath or in them. Her hair lay in a neat, straight cap around her face. She wore a dark red uniform with gold embroidery on the shoulders: a High Garda Elite uniform. That settled, for him, the identity of the men in the carriage, and likely the driver as well. “I think we can debate just who’s turned traitor at some other time, Scholar,” she said. “You’re going to help us take back what you helped steal.”

Thomas’s numb surprise vanished in a flash of rage. “No. I’m not going to help you. You killed Jess’s brother.”

“In all fairness, I thought I was killing Jess,” she said. “But all book smugglers have an automatic death sentence. I only carried out a lawful execution in defense of my Archivist.”

He calculated the odds of killing her. If they’d been even close to reasonable, he would have tried; she deserved that many times over. But she had a full squad of Elites filling in behind her, all heavily armed, and another carrier parked on the side of the street—they were on a street, he realized, but one full of derelict buildings, and no help of any kind in view. He realized with a sick churning in his stomach that he’d waited too long to escape. Five minutes earlier, and he’d have made it away.

“On your knees,” Zara said, and nodded to her squad. Three of them moved toward him, and Zara’s aim never wavered. “Twitch and I’ll kill you and find another engineer. Understood?”

“You chose me because it would hurt Wolfe,” Thomas said. “Correct?”

She shrugged. “Let’s call that a bonus. Is that bitter old fool still alive? I’d thought he would have died in the arena.”

“We’re going to win,” Thomas said, as another set of restraints settled and tightened around his wrists. “And you’re going to die.”

“That last is a certainty for everyone. But winning?” She gave him a slow, secret smile. “I think that’s going to be harder than you think, Thomas. Much, much harder.”

He lifted his head and fixed her with a look; she stared back, completely at ease. “I won’t work for you.”