Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(65)

Thomas tasted bile and swallowed hard. His hands had clenched into thick, painfully tense fists.

The Spartans still stood between him and the Archivist.

“Two things I know about you, Scholar Schreiber,” the Archivist said. “First, you care about your friends more than yourself. And second . . . you don’t break your word.”

“You do,” Thomas said. “Easily.”

“I’ve made you no promises, except that I wouldn’t kill your friend in that moment, and I’ve kept that. Now you must pay your debt. I need you to open the locks on Heron’s Tomb.”

Heron’s Tomb.

Thomas closed his eyes, and to his great and abiding shame, he thought, I would have done that for nothing. He’d dreamed of being inside Heron’s Tomb, surrounded by the astonishments that were rumored to be hidden there. Every Scholar did.

You can’t let him have what’s inside, he told himself. You don’t know what power Heron asked to be hidden there. You can’t let the Archivist be the first to use it. Your curiosity isn’t worth the world.

The Archivist said, “The sphinx has the taste of her now. It can track your friend anywhere in the city. Kill her at any time I please. Cross me, and Glain is dead. And Khalila. Dario. Morgan. Wolfe. Santi. That I guarantee, and you may rest assured I won’t break that promise.”

He didn’t mention Jess, Thomas realized. That was because he thought Jess was going to die, anyway.

“I’ll keep my word,” Thomas said. “Why me? Why didn’t you open it?”

“No one who’s attempted the Trial of Seven Locks has ever lived,” the old man said. “And I know I’m not the one to win that distinction. But you? Maybe, Scholar Schreiber. Maybe you will. And I know you love a puzzle. You’ll do it for the sheer challenge of it.”

The awful thing was that the old man was right.





EPHEMERA



Text of a letter from the last Archivist of the Library of Pergamum to the Archivist of the Great Library, shortly before the final destruction of Pergamum


My great friend and rival, I greet you in the sight of the gods and the name of knowledge, which we both have pursued so hotly over the years.

War is coming to our doorstep, and I fear that our library will not survive it this time. With every scroll lost, the world grows darker. Our lives are harder and shorter. I greatly fear that all that we have built is too fragile, too temporary, for it to last in a world of violence and greed.

When we are gone, remember us. Rise to meet the challenge we have set: become the greatest protector of knowledge in this world. Not for power, not for glory, not even for your Pharaoh’s pride. Do it for future generations who must build the world. The foundations must be solid. Don’t let it all fall to ruin.

When death comes to us here in Pergamum, I hope to die with honor. No doubt most of us will defend our scrolls to our last breaths, but there are always cowards. Always false friends. Always those who look to advantage and better opportunities. I have already found books missing from the collection, stolen by those who should be holding them closer than ever. So beware of that, should you find yourself in similar circumstances, may the gods forbid.

I know you, my great enemy and great friend, will defend your own library to the end should the world ever come for what you hold dear. Whatever our differences, we have that in common.

Hail and farewell.

Knowledge is all.





CHAPTER ELEVEN





MORGAN

“I can’t find Annis,” Morgan said, and Eskander stopped writing in his Codex, but only for a few seconds. Then he continued.

“Annis is still inside the Iron Tower,” he said. “I’d know if she’d left it.”

“What if she removed her collar?” That was both likely and, at the same time, unusual; Annis hated the collar, but she’d worn it for so long that she’d confessed to Morgan that she felt uncomfortable without it. So she might have removed it, but she wouldn’t have left without it, either.

“Even if she did, I’d still sense her crossing the threshold,” he said, and sat back. He put his pen down. “Why are you looking for her?”

“I need her help with a book. She’s fluent in Assyrian, isn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t say fluent, but she’s literate in it, yes.” He thought about that a moment. “Don’t tell her I said she wasn’t fluent. She’ll take it personally.”

“I won’t,” Morgan promised. “Can you tell me where she is, then?”

Eskander looked tired. They were all tired, of course; she was trembling with exhaustion, but rest would have to wait until she finished the translation of the passage that she needed. Thomas would require the information locked away in that obscure text if he was going to understand the inner workings of Heron’s Poseidon statue. There was every possibility that if the combined navies outside the harbor concentrated Greek fire on the statue, they might breach its coated exterior. That text contained the specifics of exactly how much damage it could endure and still function.

“I can’t find her,” Eskander said. “I’m not a tracking hound, girl, I’m the Obscurist Magnus. Find her yourself; you know her almost as well as I do. Likely she’ll be in the kitchens, or the library.”