Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(62)

“No,” she said. “But I think you won’t be able to resist this job.” She paused, then shook her head. “And all of this is your fault, you know. You are the root of all this evil. You and your printer.”

“Tota est scientia,” he said. “Knowledge is all. It either is, or it isn’t; you can’t say some knowledge is evil because it’s inconvenient for you. And anyone who claims differently has no understanding at all of what the Great Library represents.”

“We’ll debate this another time,” she said, and looked at her soldiers. “Get him. The Archivist is waiting.”

The Archivist.

Thomas swallowed a ball of fear that mixed poisonously with rage.

He would wait until they underestimated him.

Eventually, someone would.



* * *



—

The ride was short, and all Thomas could think to do was to bide his time, observe, wait, no matter how much that grated on him. He was surrounded by enemies, and not just people he disagreed with, but ones who had actively harmed him. Put him in prison. Tried to murder his friends. He had to be very, very careful.

He was also horribly aware that time was running out. If he didn’t gain his freedom and build that casing . . . the whole situation at the Lighthouse would quickly become a disaster. How long before anyone realized he’d gone missing? Hours, probably. Far too long.

There were no windows in the steam carriage, so he had no idea where they’d gone, and before the doors opened Zara slipped a heavy canvas bag over his head. Hands grasping his arms moved him into what sounded like a hallway—one just barely wide enough to accommodate his bulk, plus minders on either side—and he was almost certain it was made of stone. Low ceiling; he felt his head brushing against the top. It certainly hadn’t been made for someone of his size. His forehead hit the top of a doorway, and he staggered and stooped to fit underneath. When he straightened again, he felt he was in a larger chamber. He heard the echoes of the room. Underground? He couldn’t tell. There was a damp coolness to the air, and a smell of earth.

But when the canvas was pulled from his head, he realized he wasn’t underground. Just in a large, cavernous old building, a deserted space that must have once been used as a warehouse of some kind. Part of the roof was gone, and pigeons roosted in the rafters, murmuring.

There were at least a hundred High Garda Elite gathered here. Or, at least, he assumed that was what they were; only some of them were in the distinctive uniform. Many wore the outfits of laborers, but their bearing was pure military. There were some in Scholars’ black robes—surely those weren’t actually Scholars who’d followed this dark, ugly path? He didn’t recognize any of them, but it was a horrifying possibility.

“What is this?” he asked Zara.

“A staging ground,” she said. “Not our whole force by any means.”

They had automata as well. Many of them. They have an Obscurist. Must have. He supposed that shouldn’t come as a surprise, if Scholars had come over to the old Archivist’s side. Surely one Obscurist would turn sides. “Staging ground for what? You can’t take the Serapeum. You know that.”

“No,” she agreed. “Nor the Iron Tower. Nor the Lighthouse, not immediately. It won’t be a short battle, or a bloodless victory, but I will put the Great Library back in the hands of the man who’s guided it for half a lifetime.”

“He’s a devil!”

“No. He’s a leader. People like you, people like Wolfe . . . you all think that governance is clean and fair. It can’t be. Dissent is chaos, and it must be controlled. Knowledge is all; that’s our guiding force. And sometimes, knowledge must be protected at the cost of lives.”

“Innocent lives?”

“If necessary,” she said.

“The old saying is that knowledge is power. But power has thoroughly corrupted the man you follow now. You have to know that.”

“You’re a dreamer. You believe you can make the world. You can’t, Thomas. The world makes you.”

She was a cold one, Zara Cole. Ruthlessly good at her job, but Thomas didn’t understand her any better now than he had the first moment he’d met her. He was mostly glad of that. “What do you want from me? You know I won’t cooperate.”

“Oh, Thomas. I know you will. Because you’re a good servant of the Great Library. Follow me. Make any move to attack, or escape, and I’ll have you hamstrung.”

He believed her. And followed without tempting fate. But he was taking it all in: the soldiers, the configuration of the warehouse, the positions of guards. The stocks of supplies and weapons.

There was a large tent set up in the far corner of the room, and the concentration of guards grew higher as they approached it; Zara was stopped at the outer perimeter and told to wait by a cold-eyed High Garda captain who clearly did not trust her as much as she expected. Interesting. Thomas was searched so thoroughly they took away the nub of a pencil in his coat pocket, a bag of birdseed he kept there for pigeons, and a half-eaten wrap of cheese. “You missed the knife,” he said, and enjoyed the doubt on the face of the soldier.

The soldier wasn’t amused. “Strip,” he said. “Down to skin.” Thomas shrugged and lifted his manacled hands. The guard turned to Zara. “Unlock him.”