Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(75)

It took Khalila a moment to realize that the Archivist was crying, despite her calm and steady voice.

“Your cousin’s ship—?” Khalila turned to Dario. He shook his head.

“I couldn’t see,” he said. “God help this city if he’s gone. King Ramón Alfonse will never agree to peace if Alvaro is dead.”

They watched the Spanish fleet gather together and turn in a large, solid wheel.

Headed back for the harbor.

“No,” Dario whispered, “no, no, you fools, don’t—”

The Lighthouse’s droning alarm suddenly cut off, leaving an eerie and echoing silence, and Thomas’s Ray of Apollo kindled into fierce, solid life as thick as one of those Spanish ships. It burned a line through the water only meters away from the leading ship’s bow. Another warning. A very pointed one. It transformed water to superheated steam where it sliced, and after just a few seconds it went out.

Murasaki said, “Scholar Seif, send a message to the Spanish ambassador. Tell him to make for Tripoli with all speed, or prepare to meet his god.”

As Khalila wrote the words, black clouds swallowed the last of the day’s light, and a bolt of lightning shattered out of the heavens and struck the Iron Tower. Shimmers of power radiated down it and bled away into harmless sparks. It was as if Allah himself had decided to emphasize the message. When she finished writing, she realized that she’d used the Arabic alphabet for the city’s name. Instinct and habit. But Santiago no doubt knew Arabic as well as Greek, English, and half a dozen other tongues. All the ambassadors did.

Khalila stared at her Codex tensely until the answer appeared in tight, angry words. “Message acknowledged. They’re turning,” she said, and looked up to be sure. Yes. The Spanish ships continued their turn, avoiding the Alexandrian course and locking in for the shelter of the docks at Tripoli, and the assurance that the pasha of Libya would protect them from reprisals. They’d be safe there, if given a chilly reception by the pasha, the sooner to send them back on their way to their king. “The ambassador writes that the Great Library stands or falls alone now. They will do nothing to help or hinder our fate.”

“He is angry,” Dario said. “Alvaro’s usually much more pleasant. But his better sense will come back as soon as he cools off. I’ll send my cousin Ramón a message. Spain won’t destroy our long relationship so easily as that.” He sounded confident. Khalila hoped he was right. But for now, tonight, at least it was one less worry.

The storm’s wind arrived in a sudden gust that jerked at her hijab, and she quickly put a hand to it to be sure it held firm. The first spits of rain hit the marble, and there was an edge to that wind, a chill that seemed foreign to her. A wind that had raced halfway around the world, gathering cold and violence as it went to deliver its vengeance here.

“Close the shutters,” Murasaki said, and Khalila went to the manual hand crank and turned it to finish the job. A boom of thunder shook through the walls, the floor, her flesh and bones. The storm growled, and a low wail of wind rattled the closed window. “I need to speak with the Curia, then with the Lord Commander. We must understand what’s coming this evening, and I need an update on the search for the rebel Archivist.”

She was already in motion, walking toward the two guards standing at the door, and Khalila saw them exchange looks. Khalila moved to follow the Archivist, and Dario came with her, saying something she didn’t catch because she was distracted by another violent boom of thunder.

She didn’t see it happen, to her horror and shame. She only saw Murasaki suddenly stop, sway, and then turn toward them.

Then she saw the blood on the Archivist’s robe. Something’s wrong. She felt cold, numb, utterly incapable of understanding this because why would the Archivist be bleeding, what—

The Archivist looked at Khalila, opened her mouth, and said, “You must—”

She was shot again, in the back, and folded at the knees. She landed on the floor, tangled in her bloody robes, and Khalila screamed. Everything went suddenly, icily clear. The thin smoke curling from the barrels of High Garda guns. Dario, lunging forward.

Assassins.

She drew her knife and didn’t hesitate, not for an instant. She had practiced this motion so many times as a child, as a young woman, drilling and drilling for hours, and the second the knife left her fingers it arrowed straight for the right eye of the man on the left, the one who was smiling.

Because he was smiling.

It buried to the hilt, and he was screaming. His dying flail knocked his companion’s arm, and the shot meant for Dario went wild and gouged a white wound in the marble column behind him.

Which meant that Dario’s dagger punctured him just under the armor, angling up. It drove the soldier backward, gagging on the pain, but whatever he might have done to fight back no longer mattered, as Dario withdrew the blade and used it again. It was a pretty thing, patterned with emeralds.

It slit a throat with ease.

It took a few more seconds for the soldiers to die, but it was just stubborn bodies refusing the inevitable; Dario kicked their guns away as Khalila knelt beside the Archivist and searched for a pulse. She felt something, but it was weak. “Dario, go for help! Now!”

He didn’t want to leave her, but he obeyed and ran past the two dying men. Were more High Garda compromised? How had this happened? Did the old Archivist command even now, even here? Khalila was cold and shaking and hot all at the same time, a sickening sensation made worse by her own rapidly beating heart. She pressed down on Murasaki’s wounds as best she could, but she could see that it was a desperate situation. Blood flowered and flooded between her fingers, shallower with every pulsebeat. “Archivist? Archivist!”