Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(82)

“Dead,” he repeated numbly. “How? What happened?” Why the hell am I here? The question had real dread, real weight.

Khalila stepped forward, such a small young woman to hold such a dense gravity of purpose. “Scholar Wolfe, the Archivist was assassinated by traitorous High Garda soldiers,” she said. Her voice was steady, but he saw the tears glittering in her eyes. “Men bought off by the exiled traitor. Her last words were that you must take the post until a new Archivist can be elected and confirmed by the Curia. We cannot be without a leader. And she asked for you.”

He stared at her. His eyes burned, and for a moment he thought it was with tears, but no, no, it was anger. He couldn’t speak. Could hardly breathe for the pressure of fury building in his chest.

He turned to Nic, but Nic would not meet his eyes, or even look up.

Christopher Wolfe stood alone, the center of the world, and he hated it.

He finally found his voice. “Surely the Curia has a better suggestion.”

“We don’t,” said the Litterae Magnus—Carole Vargas, a large, dour South American woman with a breathtaking instinct for language and a deadly gift for insult. They’d come up in Ptolemy House together as students. They’d never been friends. “As difficult as this is, none of us wants the role, not in these dangerous times. You were named. You must serve.”

“As what, your sacrificial goat?” Wolfe snapped. “No.”

The head of the Medica branch said, “Archivist Murasaki named you for a reason. You know the old man, after all. You’re his bitter enemy. Who better?”

“That’s exactly why I’m not the right choice,” he said. His tone was hard as diamond, and it cut deep in his chest. Carried to every corner of the room. “By all means, give me orders to chase after him, run him to ground, bring him to justice. But don’t ask me to sit on a throne and decide the fate of nations. I can’t lead. Too many wounds, too many scars, too many enemies. You know that. Half of you only want me in the role because you think, like Murasaki, I’ll end up slaughtered; the other half will start the next hour scheming how to remove me and replace me with a more palatable choice. No. Let’s save each other time and energy by naming someone else now.”

“You have to be the one.” Khalila held something, a folded pile of cloth, that glimmered in the light. Archivist’s robes. “Please, Scholar Wolfe. Please do this. She trusted you. I trust you.”

He hesitated, then took what she offered. The weight was astonishingly light for something so important. Cloth of gold, woven so finely that it felt like silk. He held the robe by the shoulders and let it shimmer in front of him in the light, and for a brief, disorienting moment he imagined himself in it, sitting on the Archivist’s throne in that great hall.

The Archivist and Pharaoh of the Great Library.

It made him want to laugh, but he knew it would come out as half a sob. What a sour joke this was, that the same colleagues who’d looked the other way when he was dragged off in the night, when his work had been scrubbed from the shelves and his body broken in the cells in Rome . . . those same colleagues now wanted him to be their shelter. Their scapegoat. Their great and fearless leader.

He knew what he had to do.

“Very well,” he said. “I accept.” But he didn’t settle the robe around his own shoulders. He walked around Khalila, turned, and put it around her shoulders.

Her gasp went through him like a knife, and she turned, eyes as wide as saucers. “What are you doing?”

“Retiring,” he said. “And naming you my successor. Scholar Khalila Seif, will you accept my nomination as the Archivist of the Great Library of Alexandria?”

“I—I—” Khalila, never at a loss for the right words, had nothing to hand, and that made Wolfe smile just a little.

“Don’t say I can’t,” he advised her. “Because I know you, Khalila. Your family history goes deep in the Great Library. Your level of scholarship is exceptional. Your ability to navigate the difficult politics is a skill that can’t be taught, only refined. And you will have time to learn.”

Litterae Vargas said, “But she’s a child!” She sounded as shocked as Khalila.

“She’s young,” Wolfe admitted. “But hardly a child. And if you want to fight an old man who wants to drag the Great Library into the past, appoint a young woman who looks to the future. That is my recommendation, and I believe with all my heart it is the right one.” He swallowed hard and looked at Santi. “Nic?”

Santi slowly raised his head. The bleakness in his eyes was still there, and it broke Wolfe’s heart. “I knew you’d refuse. The Litterae is right. She’s just a child. But you’re also right; she’s the most intelligent, thoughtful, strong young woman I have ever met. Charm and skill and the right streak of ruthlessness. I have no objection.”

“Thank you. The Obscurists are not represented but—”

“They are,” Morgan said. She seemed to emerge out of shadows that hadn’t existed a moment before, and the power that took, the raw talent, struck all of them silent. “My apologies. Eskander was injured, but he’s better now. We had—we had an incident in the Tower. Assassins tried to—to kill many of us. But they failed.” She seemed well enough, but there was a bright shimmer to her eyes that Wolfe recognized, and it put him on edge. She was exhausted, and exhaustion in an Obscurist like her was deadly to those around her. He still felt the unnatural, unnerving pull of her at his life-force. She’d tried to unravel him like an old sweater before, and even now he felt the black need gnawing at her control. His Obscurist talents were blunted, but not entirely absent. He knew.