Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(69)

“Sir, that might take days,” she said quietly. “We might not have days.”

“Start with the ones that pose the most threat and work down. But we don’t have time to waste.”

Shouts had broken out below them, and both Obscurists and High Garda soldiers were rushing to the rescue. Good. As the first High Garda met them, Morgan said, “The Obscurist Magnus has been wounded. Find someone to take him to the Medica floor. Go up three floors; you’ll find another High Garda who’s knocked unconscious. Arrest him for treason.”

The soldier—a tall, capable-looking young woman—hesitated only an instant before looking to Eskander for confirmation. When she got the nod, she began issuing orders to those arriving. Morgan wasn’t good at reading rank, but she thought this woman must have been a sergeant, at least. She had the bearing and authority.

Two Obscurists and two High Garda were assigned the task of taking Eskander to the Medica. He paused before leaving. “Start now,” he told her. “We’re out of time already.”

She bowed her head, and swallowed her worry as she descended the stairs. She was halfway down when the High Garda sergeant called, “Obscurist Hault? We can’t get through this—barrier.”

Without pausing, Morgan raised her hand and pushed the air back to normal density. She heard a sharp pop and felt the rush of wind ripple past her, but she didn’t look back.

She had work to do.



* * *



—

Obscurist Salvatore had his own office on the fourth floor. The entire level was dedicated to automata control; there were more than fifty Obscurists working constantly on monitoring and rewriting commands, but Salvatore’s office had only two others in it, both assistants.

Morgan didn’t know them. And couldn’t trust that they hadn’t also turned traitor. “Out,” she snapped to them, and when the middle-aged man began to protest, she looked at her High Garda escort, and without a word spoken, they were both taken away. “I’m going to need food, water, and Obscurists Chowdry and Salk. They’ll be assigned here for now.” She knew both of them, and they were competent, solid, loyal people. “Take the Codexes and journals off both of those two who were just taken out of here. Review them for any signs of disloyalty or deception.”

“Yes, Obscurist,” the sergeant said. She’d joined Morgan after seeing to the arrests, and from her posture she intended to stay.

“What’s your name?” Morgan asked her.

“Sergeant Mwangi,” the woman said.

“Thank you, Sergeant Mwangi.”

Mwangi inclined her head just the slightest bit and left the room for a moment. Morgan opened the cabinet in the corner of Salvatore’s office and found more than fifty volumes shelved there; each had the classification of automata on the spine. There were seventeen volumes just for sphinxes, ten for lions. More than twenty for Scribes.

This would take a long time, and she already felt the ache building behind her eyes. She pulled the first volume and carried it to Salvatore’s desk. He had a bookstand, and she placed the volume there. The entries were orderly, but it was the wrong order for what she needed, and she requested them differently; the contents revised, and she had groupings of sphinxes in the highest-risk spots in Alexandria, starting with the Serapeum.

She started with the first and pressed her fingers to the entry. She felt an answering tingle of connection. Storeroom in the Serapeum. She called up the complex formulae that formed the basic program for this type of creature and overlaid it on the code she called up from the patrolling sphinx. It fit perfectly. No meddling.

She placed a verification code on the entry and moved on.

Ten entries on, she felt rather than saw the two Obscurists she’d asked for take their places, and she paused to instruct them on how to proceed. They didn’t need oversight, which was why she’d requested them; both had written countless scripts for automata. They understood how to find even clever digressions. She had Salk take the lions, and Chowdry the less common models: Spartans, gods, monsters of all types.

She found her first compromised sphinx nearly a hundred entries on, blocked the malicious commands, and marked the automaton as compromised. That one patrolled the Serapeum’s gardens, but so far, no one had activated its more sinister functions. She continued, moving faster, and located two more before her headache and exhaustion forced her to pause for food and water and to rest her eyes. She put up a map of Alexandria on the wall and marked where she’d found compromised machines; the others added their own discoveries. She found only two tampered with at the Serapeum, but there were six inside the Great Archives. Six inside the Lighthouse. All the sphinxes inside the Greek fire facility, but those had been discovered and their malicious commands erased by someone else. Eskander, most likely.

She finished the first volume and went to the second.

She wasn’t even certain how far she’d gone when something odd dragged her out of her iron concentration. Her brain wouldn’t put it into the right box, since it was so fixed on the problem in front of her . . . and then she knew what had distracted her.

Screaming.

She looked up. Sergeant Mwangi was still in the doorway, but she was writing in her Codex, and as Morgan focused on her the sergeant said, “I’m locking you in here for safety.”

“No!” Morgan jumped to her feet and ran out. “You two, keep working!” She crossed the threshold, and Mwangi locked the door behind her. From the corridor, she could hear the sounds more clearly. “What’s happening?”