Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(86)
Click.
With noiseless elegance, the entire statue of Thoth rolled backward on the plinth and revealed a narrow staircase leading down. The air that breathed out of that chamber smelled ancient and stale. Thomas didn’t move, though every impulse demanded he charge recklessly down toward the secrets that Heron promised. “How many died of bad air?” he asked.
The Archivist touched his fingertips to his chin, as if trying to remember, though Thomas knew he must have every fact memorized. “A few,” he finally said. “But since you’ve asked so nicely . . .”
The High Garda Elite captain held a mask. It shimmered with some kind of coating, a chemical that was probably also alchemical, activated by an Obscurist’s work. Thomas took it, strapped it on, and was pleasantly surprised by the fit of the thing. It felt perfectly balanced, and when he breathed in, the air seemed fresh and clean.
“We use them for fighting fires. This will last two hours,” the captain said. “If you aren’t out by then, you won’t be coming out.”
“I’ll need light,” Thomas said. The Archivist nodded again, and the Elite captain handed him a portable glow lamp.
“Anything else?” the captain asked.
“A basic tool set wouldn’t be unreasonable.”
“I’m afraid not,” the Archivist said. “Seeing that you can do a lot of damage with the contents of a tool kit, Thomas. I’m not a fool. If you need something, we will send it down to you. Until then, you have what you need.”
Thomas pocketed the lockpick wires, in case the Archivist was inclined to take them back. And then he thought, I’m free. If I can break through the soldiers and run . . .
But truthfully? He didn’t want to run.
He wanted to know.
Thomas placed his boot on the first step. He paused, listening. No sounds of machinery, not yet. He descended the staircase slowly, ready to plunge up or down at any sign of a trap.
But the stairs, at least, were safe.
He was not so certain of the floor, when he arrived at the last tread. It was not a large chamber, and there was nothing in it but gray flagstones, all identical as far as he could tell. This, he thought, was where Jess’s speed and agility would have come in handy; his friend’s reactions were supernaturally quick. Next to that, Thomas knew his size was a liability here. He crouched down and lowered the lamp, looking closer. As he did, he caught a faint, quick shimmer on one of the flagstones.
Moving the glow back and forth showed him that the stone had a very light coating of something on its surface. But whether that marked it as safe or dangerous . . . impossible to tell without experimentation.
Thomas reached into his pockets. The soldiers had, of course, confiscated almost everything; what he had left was a bit of paper, the twisted wires he’d used for lock picking, and lint. But he did have something else, he realized, and rolled up his sleeve to remove his golden Scholar’s bracelet. For the first time, he remembered that the Obscurists could track locations. Had his been rendered inert? Or was it possible that Morgan could look for him? That rescue was on the way?
No way to be certain.
Thomas carefully tossed the bracelet onto the coated stone.
Nothing. No movement. No sound beyond the clink of metal on rock.
Now for the other test.
The glow lamp had a handle on top, and he held it by that as he slowly lowered it to one of the plain flagstones directly in front of the stairs.
He heard the hiss of steam. Pressure release. Thomas snatched the lantern back just as gleaming metal spears slammed down from the ceiling through openings that had been invisible in the dim light. They withdrew just as rapidly as they’d appeared, like a deadly mirage. By the time alarm ignited in his nerves, it was already over.
No bodies or blood here, so that meant that whatever tomb robbers had made it inside had managed to figure it out.
So that meant the coated flagstones were safe. It was a simple kind of challenge, meant for the careful and observant. Easy enough to avoid if someone knew how to reason it out.
He still tested the theory. The weight from the lantern on a coated flagstone got no response.
Was the floor considered the first trial? Or the second, after picking the lock? He couldn’t be sure. Thomas balanced himself carefully as he rose and stepped onto the first safe stone and bent to retrieve his bracelet. The space on the stone was a narrow fit for his feet, and he realized that this was going to be harder than he’d thought. Ancient people had been smaller than average, and he was considerably larger. He’d need to go with great care.
Picking his way across the flagstones took time, but he had managed to avoid triggering any deadly surprises. The path led him to a blank wall. Completely, utterly blank. Interesting.
Thomas placed his hand on the wall. If the statue of Thoth had reacted to a Scholar’s bracelet, perhaps this test did as well.
It did not. He nearly lost his precarious balance on the safe flagstone when he heard something moving behind him.
He had to suppress the impulse to recklessly turn, which would have surely killed him, and slowly looked over his shoulder. In an alcove that had been hidden before stood an automaton sphinx, but one that seemed sleeker, more well defined than the ones he knew from above in the city. This was Heron’s work. He wanted to run his hands over the lines, get into the mechanism, see the wonders of this thing . . . and then he realized that this wondrous thing was likely going to kill him.
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