Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(96)

Twins were not meant to survive alone.

Wolfe simply shook his head and motioned to Dario, who stepped away to huddle with Glain and Wolfe. That left Jess with Morgan, who was watching him with a frown. “You look dreadful,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“I mean it, Jess. You shouldn’t be here.”

She was seeing more, he thought, than just his generally awful outward appearance. He couldn’t hide from her. It was something he both loved and feared about her. “You can’t fix me,” he said. “Can you?”

She shook her head. “It was your choice,” she said. “I’ve been reminded that I can’t save everyone, especially not if it’s their own chosen path.” She smiled, briefly. It hurt him. “I’m not even sure I can save myself, if I’m being quite honest.”

Dario was shaking his head forcefully, and that caught Jess’s attention. He left Morgan and walked to join that conversation. “No,” Dario was saying. “I’m not doing this. I’ve had enough of intrigue. Let someone else—”

“No one else can make him believe it,” Glain said. “Who do you think lies better, you or me?”

“He will know! I already double-crossed the Spanish; don’t you think he’d have been told of that? I arranged for the slaughter of half his High Garda Elites! I’m the last person he’d believe just now.”

“Dario. There’s no one else.” Glain sounded calm and patient, but there was weight there. “He’s not going to believe Wolfe, or me, or gods know, Jess. Definitely not Morgan. Who else is there?”

Dario’s brows drew together, and from Jess’s viewpoint he could see the Spaniard really didn’t like the suggestion he was about to make. “I . . . might have a solution,” he said. “Jess, what about your father?”

“No,” Wolfe snapped, at the same time that Jess said, “Yes.” They looked at each other. Wolfe got to it first. “There is absolutely no way that I trust your father to do anything but betray our interests.”

“Well, true,” Jess agreed. He drew a breath harder than he meant to and was racked by coughs that grayed out his vision and turned his legs to jelly, and when he blinked his way back into the world, Wolfe was clutching his arm to hold him up. And they all stared at him with identical expressions of concern . . . no, not Morgan. Morgan’s was sadder than the others. Tinged with the knowledge he was sicker than he pretended. “Sorry. Yes, my da is a snake who’ll turn on anyone for a profit. But he won’t turn on me. I’m all he’s got left.”

“Jess—” Morgan’s voice was gentle, and more than a little appalled. “Jess, you can’t do this.”

“It’s something I can do,” he said. “I can beg. And he’ll enjoy that.”

They all fell silent, even Dario, who in earlier days might have mocked him. Maybe they all knew the weight of what that meant to him. He ignored them. He took out his Codex and wrote to his father, in the family’s code. As he did, he asked, “Where do you want to set the trap?”

A cough seized him at the end of that, twisted his lungs into knots, and reduced him to gagging blood on the ground. More than he liked. Wolfe held on to him, and he could feel the trembling of the Scholar’s hands. See the horror, quickly covered again, on Dario’s face.

After a long rain-drenched span of seconds, Glain said, “All right. You remember how to get to the ancient Serapeum, don’t you? The one on our first day at Ptolemy House?”

The day they’d discovered just how potentially deadly the game of the Great Library really was. Jess caught his breath, but it tasted foul and didn’t do him much good. “The old Archivist won’t like it,” he managed to say. “Too enclosed.”

“Have your father say it’s for his own safety. That’s no doubt true; there’s a standing bounty on Callum Brightwell’s head all over the Great Library.”

Jess didn’t waste time or breath discussing that. He just wrote the message out. He wondered what his father felt, seeing his handwriting appear. Wondered if it brought relief or anger. Probably both.

The delay was agonizing. What if he’s so angry he won’t reply? What if he’s cut you off entirely? That would probably be a personal blessing, but now . . .

His father’s handwriting began to inscribe itself onto the page, bland words that hid the message within. Are you sure?

Yes, Jess replied. Make it quick.

The delay was longer this time. He tried to ignore his own weariness, the shakes that rattled through him, the bleariness of his eyes. Come on, Da. For one time in your life, be useful to me without any gain for yourself.

The message finally came through. He took the bait. I’ve promised him escape and the funds to raise his own army to take back the throne. I told him you and Brendan both betrayed the family business and I wanted to make amends. He might not believe it. I wouldn’t.

Jess waited for something else, anything else . . . a simple How are you? or Look after yourself, or the impossible I love you, son. Anything but silence.

He finally closed the Codex and swallowed a bitter sense of loss. He hadn’t actually lost anything.

But it still hurt.

“He’s sent the message to the old man, and the old man’s agreed. Whether or not the Archivist will show up . . . that’s not certain.”