Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(97)

“I’ll go there,” Wolfe said. “Glain? We’ll need your squad. And to be cleverer than the old man thinks we are.”

He glanced at Jess, just briefly, but Jess understood that to mean something. He nodded.

“I’ll be fine; the Medica gave me a stronger mask and new medication on the way out,” he said. He turned to Morgan, but seeing her face made him forget what he meant to say. She knew he was lying. “Can you help us with this?”

“Yes. I wish I could kill him for you. But . . . I can’t.” She lifted her hand so the ring was visible. “Eskander gave me this to help me control my . . . hungers. The ring won’t allow me to harm anyone unless they’re harming me first.” She looked him straight in the eyes as she continued. “It also won’t let me take away conscious choices people make. Such as making a deliberate decision to sacrifice themselves. Bear that in mind.”

He nodded. He understood. And, in a strange way, he was grateful for it. Maybe he wouldn’t be when this all came to an end and he was gasping for his last breath. But for now it felt comforting to know that his choices were his own, still.

“My clever father,” Wolfe muttered. “Trust Eskander to find yet another way to make this more difficult. All right, then. Do what you can. Dario—”

“I’m not going to kill him,” Dario said, and held up both hands in refusal. “I’ve got no wish to be cut to pieces by whatever automata he’s programmed to avenge him. Or worse, murdered by his lackeys. That would be a commoner’s way to die.”

“We’ll make sure everyone knows how royally you bled to death,” Glain said, but she was smiling. Jess felt it, too: belonging somewhere. Belonging here, with them. It meant something more than just . . . usefulness.

He was fairly certain, though he had no good context for it, that this was what it felt like to have a real, genuinely loving family.

“Come on, then,” Glain said. “My squad will meet us there. If I remember correctly, there’s access to a sniper’s gallery on the upper level. We’ll position there.”

“He’ll know about it,” Wolfe warned her. “Our sole advantage is that we get there first.”

“Then let’s move,” Jess said. “I’ll keep up.” The looks they gave one another, if not him . . . It was irritating and warm at the same time. “Fine. Find me a ride, then.”

“I happen to have a carrier parked just around the corner,” Glain said, as if she hadn’t been thinking about him when she ordered it up. “Dario, don’t even think about asking for a nicer ride.”

He shrugged that away. “Sadly, I’m becoming used to the hardships.”



* * *



—

They did indeed get to the original Serapeum first; the carrier dropped them on the street near Ptolemy House and sped away, moving fast to some other destination. The rain was just a light drizzle now, and a bit warmer, or else Jess had just become accustomed to discomfort. The clouds still hit the moon, and even the streetlight glows couldn’t make the streets look less than deserted and forbidding. From here, the sounds of fighting still echoed, but far away, as if they might not matter at all.

“Someone’s still at Ptolemy House,” Dario said, and Jess turned in that direction. Their old dormitory must have contained postulants for the upcoming year—unfortunate timing for them, he supposed—and he wondered who had been appointed as their proctor. Not Wolfe, obviously. For a moment he remembered what it had been like there. Dario, the peacock bully. Thomas, shy and quiet and unsure of his own genius. Khalila had changed the least, he thought; she’d always been so calmly self-assured. He and Morgan and Glain had probably shifted the most, each in their own directions. Each toward their strengths.

Had Wolfe changed? If he had, it was impossible to tell. He slapped both of them on the backs of their heads as he passed.

“Gawk later,” he said. “Move.”

The entrance to the ancient Serapeum, the very first public library of Alexandria—and in the world—seemed dark and deserted, until one of Glain’s Blue Dogs melted out of the shadows. More followed. Not a magic trick, but it felt like one tonight. Jess nodded to those he knew, which was most, and from the way they looked at him, even the new ones knew who he was. “No one inside,” Glain’s lieutenant said. “You’re sure about this. Once we’re inside, we’re rats in a trap.”

“No,” Glain said. “We’re the cats. The rats are about to arrive, so let’s get set up. Scholar, you, Jess, and Dario are the cheese. I’ll keep Morgan with me.”

Morgan started past but suddenly turned and enveloped him in a hug. Jess, surprised, returned it for just a few seconds before stepping away. “Not good-bye,” he said. “You’re not that lucky.”

“I’m very lucky,” Morgan said. “Look who I call friends.”

Friends was a deliberate choice of word, he thought, and so was the hand she put so gently against his face. He swallowed a thickness in his throat as Glain, the Blue Dogs, and Morgan disappeared up a hidden set of narrow stairs. The space down here in the round chamber was empty; the scrolls were long since gone, and the stone shelves sat empty. It seemed ominously still.

Jess felt naked, cold, and suddenly very aware that he might end his life in this place. Well, he thought, dying in an ancient library isn’t the worst way to go.