Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(76)

Murasaki’s lips moved. They’d gone a pale, unnatural color, but her eyes were fierce and dark, and her hand gripped Khalila’s wrist and held it tightly.

“You must get to Wolfe,” she said. “I trust no one else now. He must serve.”

“He won’t!”

“He must,” Murasaki repeated, and let her head fall back to the bloody floor. She closed her eyes and whispered something in Japanese. Khalila didn’t catch the meaning.

“Archivist? I didn’t hear!”

Murasaki, with a huge force of will, opened her eyes and said, “Codex.”

She was dying, and she asked for a Codex. Khalila, confused, handed hers over and opened it to a blank page. Put the stylus in the Archivist’s shaking fingers.

And the Archivist wrote. Just three lines, and then the stylus fell from her fingers and she put her head back down and let out her last breath in a long, quiet sigh.

Khalila bit her lip to hold back tears and retrieved the stylus, then looked at the words Murasaki had written. Her eyes blurred. The graceful kanji written there looked like music.

It was her jisei, her death poem. An achievement the great Japanese poets aspired to make in their last moments.


Desert rain runs clean

Green chains shatter in lightning

I run warm at last



She felt Dario beside her and said, “She’s gone.” Her voice sounded soft and lonely. His arms closed around her. “Dario, she’s gone.”

“I know, love.” He took a deep breath. “More High Garda are on the way. Honest ones, I hope. God knows how much geneih it took to buy these men.”

She wiped her tears as he helped her to her feet. “This should never have happened. Never!” She felt ice-cold now, and full of fury. “We shouldn’t have killed them both. Now they can’t answer for what they’ve done.”

“Revenge can wait,” Dario said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Unwounded. You?”

“I’m fine,” he said. Her Codex buzzed, and she reached for it, then hesitated. Her hands were still bloody, and she wiped them on her dress before opening the book.

Dario watched her read the message. “What is it?”

“Santi’s coming in person,” she said. “He’s angry.”

“He should be. These are his people. It’s an outrage.”

“Dario. Did you hear what she said?”

“When?”

“Before she wrote the poem. Did you hear?”

“No.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “She wanted us to find Wolfe. She wanted Wolfe to be the next Archivist.”

And that meant drawing a perfect target on the back of the man she had grown to love as much as her own father.





EPHEMERA



Text of a letter from the Russian ambassador, destroyed before delivery to the Archivist in Exile As you asked, we sacrificed our two most precious assets—High Garda soldiers assigned within the Serapeum, in striking distance of the False Archivist. Though it cost their lives, they were successful. I am pleased to report that she is dead. Confusion will now set in. And with it, we now have our chance. Tonight we will attack the northeastern gates, and your inventions you sold us will no doubt strike real fear into the High Garda. I marvel that you’ve never used them for the defense of the Great Library. Unless you know something I don’t.

Tonight is your chance. Seize it! It will not come again.

If you survive, we will of course allow you to take the throne of Alexandria once more.

But the tsar of Russia will be the true ruler of this place. That is the bargain. We will hold you to it by whatever means necessary.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN





WOLFE

The Necropolis was more of a cemetery now than ever, as the bodies were lined up and casualties counted.

Anit’s criminals were unpleasantly good at killing. The High Garda Elites had given a good accounting of themselves, and the fighting within the miniature Serapeum had gone on for hours, but they had never expected to be trapped inside it. They’d thought to fight in the dark and strike before Wolfe and his team had any warning.

Jess’s trick with the mirrors had robbed them of their stealth, and his accuracy with a rifle had robbed them of their most valuable snipers. From then on, it had been straight combat, and good as they were—and High Garda Elites were very good—they were rarely challenged in any meaningful way. They’d always had the architecture of the Serapeum to defend them, and the automata, and their own legend. The only automaton here was the Minotaur, and Jess had blinded it. It roamed the tombs like a ghost still, lost and dangerous.

Wolfe made himself a note to ask Morgan to see to stopping the thing. But that would be a low priority, he suspected, in the chaos of the day.

Anit’s losses were also considerable; once the tally of the dead and wounded was complete, she’d lost ten and sent five to be treated by the physician, Burnham, who’d come with them on this grim adventure. The High Garda Elite’s fatalities numbered forty-six, and the remaining four had finally surrendered. Wolfe would have to find some deep hole to throw them in—but not one they’d ever guarded before and might know how to cheat. That would be a challenge. Maybe expulsion from the city would be the best possible answer . . . No, that would just give their enemies outside the walls useful allies and information. It was a terrible thought, but he knew it would have been a simpler problem if they’d just killed them all.