Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(64)

“What happened to him?” he asked, and tried to make it sound as if he didn’t care so much it tore him apart. He thought he failed. Not Jess, no . . .

“Blame Wolfe. He dragged Jess into my office, searching for secrets. Jess breathed in Dragonfire. His time on this earth is limited.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Thomas said. He didn’t. He wasn’t involved in the making of High Garda weapons, if it was one.

“No reason you should; the formula for it burned up with the Black Archives. A demonic sort of weapon, one that rots you from within. There is no antidote, and very little chance of survival. So I suppose that is the end of the Brightwells, so far as their dynasty is concerned. Good riddance. Smugglers and book thieves deserve to be wiped from this earth.”

Thomas rocked back on his heels, feeling it like a real, physical blow in his stomach. Poison. Jess had been poisoned. And there was no cure. No, surely there must be something. Anything at all. Morgan could heal him. She would.

“Jess is no longer your concern, or mine,” the man said. “Wolfe soon won’t be, either, along with whoever he drags into his hapless efforts to kill me. He’ll be the death of more than one of your friends in the end. And accomplish nothing. By the end of today I will hold the Great Library again and impose order. I’ll have to execute all the traitors, of course. I will do so because that is the hard thing, the necessary thing, that ensures the Great Library’s survival. But not you, Thomas: you can help me. I can spare your life if you help me.”

Thomas didn’t blink. “Kill me,” he said. “I’d rather be a useless corpse than a useful fool.”

Maybe it was the bleak certainty in his voice that made the Archivist look to Zara; Thomas felt rather than saw her nod. She believed him. The Archivist sighed. “Then we’ll have to make this more difficult,” he said. “Zara. Show him.”

She walked to a tall cabinet in the corner—a heavy cedar thing, with the Great Library seal worked in gold on the doors—and opened it. Inside was a large silver mirror. The Archivist rose and touched the ornate frame. “I had this made a long time ago,” he said. “Another hangs in the office of the High Garda Lord Commander. One in the office of the Obscurist Magnus, one in the Lighthouse room of the Artifex Magnus. Do you know what it is?”

Thomas didn’t answer. He watched the surface of the mirror ripple like a troubled sea, and then it settled again, took on a reflection—no, not a reflection at all, an image—of a map of Alexandria. Detailed and perfect, down to what seemed to be every building, every street and alleyway.

The Archivist touched a part of the map, and the image changed. Bright red dots appeared. He touched one of them, and the image sharpened again, into what seemed a brightly lit cavern full of white houses.

No. Tombs. The Necropolis of Alexandria. The view was moving, as if they were gods looking down on the city of the dead. Thomas stepped closer, because he saw people. This was not an image. It was something else, as immediate as the connection of writing in one Codex and the precise text appearing in another. He could see people moving, and as the image sharpened, he even recognized a face.

Glain Wathen. She stood beside someone with his back turned to the view, but the posture was familiar. Scholar Wolfe. Glain was speaking with a young woman in a dark blue tunic and trousers. He knew her, too. Little Anit, Red Ibrahim’s daughter. Safe. They were safe.

Then he saw Jess. His friend sat on the ground, propped against the wall of a tomb, and his color almost matched the pale stone. He looked ill and miserable, and he had some sort of mask over his face.

But he was alive, that was clear enough, and some of the awful tension in Thomas’s gut eased. He glanced at the Archivist and realized this was not what the old man had expected, or wanted to show him; the fury in those faded eyes burned like acid.

“They’re alive,” Thomas said. “What did you think you were going to show me? All my friends, lying dead?”

The Archivist glared at him. “Watch.”

The circling view suddenly began to change. As if the watcher was falling out of the sky, plummeting down . . . toward his friends. Thomas saw a flash of metal feathers and realized what the Archivist had, what this view in his mirror showed.

They were looking through the eyes of a sphinx that had been circling quietly overhead, and now arrowed down straight for Glain.

“No!” Thomas shouted, and lunged forward, but two Spartans were there before him, spears crossed, shields joined. He ran into the barrier, and the Archivist held his ground. Smiling.

Thomas watched helplessly as Glain realized, too late, that she was in danger. The sphinx landed on her back, slammed her down to the ground, and pinned her there with a clawed paw on the back of her neck. Blood sprang from where the knife-sharp claws dug in.

“Five seconds, Thomas,” the Archivist said. “You have five seconds to agree, or her head comes off.”

There was so much blood. The claws dug deeper. Glain was writhing, trying to break free.

“Two seconds—”

“Stop!” Thomas couldn’t control the word—it burst out of him in a desperate rush. “Stop this!”

“Agree! One second!”

“Yes! I agree! Stop!”

The sphinx suddenly launched back into the air, spiraling up, and in the view as it rose, Thomas saw Wolfe rush to Glain’s side. There was no sound, but Jess was kneeling beside her, too, and others were moving to help. Bright pops from weapons, and the sphinx shuddered and veered.