Paper and Fire, Page 2

  His uniform jacket was still clean, and he put it on as he finished the coffee. Glain watched in silence for a moment before she said, "You were about to tell me something."

  "Later," he said. "After the exercise. It's going to be a longer conversation."

  "All right." As he stopped to check his uniform in front of the mirror, she rolled her eyes. "You're pretty enough for both of us, Brightwell."

  "Charmed you think so, Squad Leader. You're quite handsome yourself today." Handsome was a good description. Glain had chopped her dark hair closer for convenience; it suited her, he decided, and fit well with the solid curves of a body made for endurance and strength. There was no attraction between them, but there was respect--more now than before, he thought. Some, like Oduya, might mistake it for something else. She might be right to be concerned. Jess met her eyes in the mirror. "That compliment stops at the doorway, of course."

  She nodded. It seemed brisk, but there was a look in her eyes that he thought might be some form of gratitude. "Stop preening and let's go."

  They left his room together, but, thankfully, no one was in the hall to see it. The squad had gathered toward the end, talking casually, but all that stopped as Glain approached. Jess silently took position with the rest of the squad, and Glain led them out at a fast walk for the parade ground. Despite his sweaty weariness, he looked forward to this; it was a chance to let a little of his anger out of that locked, chained box. There wouldn't be any real surprises. It was just an exercise, after all.

  He was dead wrong about that, and it cost him.

  They were in the tenth long hour on the exercise ground when Jess saw a flash of movement from the corner of his eye and tried to turn toward it, but he was hampered by thick layers of cloth and the flexible armor, and just simply too slow, too tired, and too late.

  A shot hit him squarely in the back.

  Then he was on the ground, looking up at a merciless Alexandrian sky scratched white by the heat, and he couldn't breathe. The pain crushed all the air out of his chest, and for a split second he wondered if something had gone badly wrong, if all the safety measures had failed, if he was going to die . . . And then his frozen solar plexus unlocked and he gulped in a raw, whooping mouthful of air.

  A shadow blocked out the burning sun, and he knew her by the short-cropped halo of hair that bristled up. After blinking a few times, he saw that Glain was holding out a hand to him. He bit down on his pride and took it, and she hauled him to unsteady feet.

  "What the hell did you do wrong, Brightwell?" she asked him. There was no sympathy in her voice. He shook his head, still intent on getting breath back in his lungs. "I told you all to watch your backs. You didn't listen. If these weapons had been loaded with real ammunition, you'd be a mess to clean up right now."

  He felt halfway dead, anyway. The training weapons that the High Garda of the Great Library used were not toys; they delivered real jolts and very real bruises. "Sorry," he muttered, and then, a second too late, "sir."

  Now that she wasn't just a silhouette against the sun, he could see the warning flash in her eyes. We're not equals here. Forgetting that was a stupid, personal issue he needed to overcome, and quickly; she couldn't afford to let it slip for long without seeming to encourage a lack of discipline in the ranks of their squad.

  Hard habit to break, friendship.

  The rest of the squad gathered together now from around the corners of the mock buildings that served as their training ground. It was mercilessly hot, as it always was, and each of his fellow Garda soldiers now looked as exhausted and sweat streaked as he did. Glain wiped her face with an impatient swipe of her sleeve and barked, loud enough for the rest of the squad to hear, "Report what you did wrong, soldier!"

  "Squad Leader, sir, I failed to watch my back," Jess said. His voice sounded strained, and he knew from the still-burning ache in his back that he was going to have a spectacular sunset of a bruise. "But--"

  Her face set like concrete. "Are you about to excuse your failure, Brightwell?"

  "No, sir!" He cut a look at Tariq, who was openly grinning. "It was friendly fire, sir!"

  "Oh, be fair. I'm not that friendly," Tariq said. "And I did it on orders."

  "Orders?" Jess looked at Glain, whose face was as unreadable as the wall behind her. "You ordered him to shoot me in the back?"

  Glain's expression never flickered. "In the real world, you'd better watch your friends as much as your enemies. Allies can turn on you when you least expect it. I hope the bruises remind you."

  He hardly needed the tip and she knew it. He wasn't a fool; he'd grown up never trusting people. Trust, for him, was a recently acquired skill that had developed in the company of his friends and fellow postulants. Like Glain. Who was trying to remind him not to rely on it.

  Jess swallowed a bitter mouthful of anger and said, "No excuses, sir. Tariq always struck me as shifty, anyway."

  "Then why'd you let your guard down, you bright spark?" Tariq said. "I admit, I like playing the heinous villain, sir."

  "Playing?" someone else in the squad muttered, and Tariq mimed a finger shot in her direction as he swigged from his canteen. Jess would have laughed if it didn't hurt so much, but Glain's lesson had been pointed . . . and on point. I can't afford to relax, he thought. I knew as much from the beginning. Glain's just trying to remind me. With, unfortunately, Glain's typical subtlety.

  "Settle," Glain said flatly, and the squad did. Instantly. Nobody questioned her--not for long. Jess certainly didn't. "We're nearly at the end of training," she told them, and paced back and forth in front of them with a lithe, restless energy that never seemed to go away, no matter how long the day. "We will finish in the lead. Screw that up, any of you, and I'll slap you out of service hard enough to brand my palm print on your grandmother's face. Clear?"

  "Clear, sir!" they all responded, instantly and in perfect chorus. They'd learned how to move and speak in concert long, painful months ago. That was Glain's doing. She'd end up High Garda commander one day . . . or dead. But she'd never settle for less than perfection.

  "I'm tempted to make you run it again," Glain was saying, and there was a barely perceptible moan that ran through the group she didn't acknowledge, "but you've bled enough for one day. You weren't terrible, and next time had better be an improvement. Shower, drink, eat, rest. Dismissed."

  That, Jess thought, is why she's good at this. She'd pushed them all very hard, to the point of breaking, but she knew when to give just a touch of encouragement. And, most of all, she knew when to stop. None of them, not even him, were being carried to the Medica tents, which couldn't be said for a lot of other squads who weren't as highly ranked as Glain's.

  Around them, this section of the High Garda training ground was almost deserted; it was reserved for trainee testing. Everyone else had called it a day long ago, since the mess bells had pealed half an hour back, and now that Jess had the chance to think about it, his stomach growled fiercely. He'd burned off the light breakfast hours ago.

  He fell into step with Shi Zheng and Tariq, but stopped when Glain said, "Brightwell. A word."

  Others gave him sympathetic looks but didn't pause; they walked around him as he halted and turned back. Glain was still pacing, and doing it in full sun; she never minded the scorching Alexandrian heat. The sun loved her just as much, and her skin had darkened to a warm, woody brown over the months of exposure. Jess, who'd been in the climate precisely the same amount of time, had managed to achieve only a light coating of translucent tan over layers of memorable burns. "Sir?"

  She fixed a stare somewhere over his shoulder, toward the horizon. "Message came in earlier to me from Captain Santi. He says to tell you . . . no." She suddenly shifted to fix her gaze right on his. "No to what, Jess?"

  "Glain--"

  "That's Squad Leader Wathen to you, and no to what?"

  "I asked to talk to Wolfe. Sir."

  "Why?"

  It was the coward's way out, but he gave her the second
reason he wanted a meeting with their old Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who'd pushed them through a memorable period of hell as postulants. "I wanted to know if he knew anything of the Black Archives."

  She blinked, and her look shifted--still suspicious and dark, but a good deal more concerned. "You told me you thought they were a myth just this morning. You must have asked days ago."

  "I did. For the same reasons you gave. Seemed to me that if the Black Archives existed--and I never said I thought they did--then it might be a place to look into Thomas's death." He looked down. "I got a letter from his father, thanking me for being his friend. He asked if I knew exactly how his son died."

  Glain said nothing to that, but after a moment, she nodded. "You didn't want me looking into the subject because you already were."

  "And they watch us, Glain," he said. "All of us." It was burning his tongue to tell her the truth, but he knew, knew how she'd take it. And he was too tired. He wanted to tell her in better circumstances, when the clock wasn't ticking down. If there was an exercise, she needed her focus more than he did . . . or, at least, that was what he told himself.

  "Which brings us to the point: stay away from Wolfe. You know it's not safe, for him or you."

  "I won't ask again."

  "Dismissed, then, Brightwell. We'll talk later."

  He nodded and jogged away to put space between them. Curious that Captain Niccolo Santi had passed the message, and Wolfe hadn't sent it himself. But, then, their teacher had been a barbed puzzle since the start.

  Wolfe was not a kind man or a natural teacher, but he'd tried his best to save his students. That didn't make him a friend, exactly, but Wolfe would want to know the truth about Thomas, too. Once he did . . . No wonder Captain Santi wants to keep me away from him, Jess thought. Wolfe wouldn't let it go. No more than Jess could. Or Glain, once he told her. Good that he had a little more time to think. He needed a plan before he set that particular cat among the pigeons, didn't he?

  His back ached, and his head pounded from the heat and exertion. Dinner was as fast as breakfast, fuel he ate without really noting it, and afterward Jess fell into bed for a few short hours--far less than he needed--before dragging himself up. He still had things to do that couldn't be done in the open.

  He showered, changed into civilian clothing, shoveled down food in the common dining hall, and slipped away from the High Garda compound into the embrace of a rich, sea-cooled Alexandrian evening, beneath a blue-black sky scattered with hard stars.

  This was work better done in the dark.

  EPHEMERA

  Excerpt from report from Obscurist Gregory Valdosta to Obscurist Magnus Keria Morning

  . . . regarding our new problem child, Morgan Hault, I have seen little improvement and much to worry me. I'd have thought six months of intensive training and supervision here in the Iron Tower would have wrought some changes in her, but she remains stubborn, sly, and dreadfully smart. Only this morning I found that when I put her to work writing out standard representational formulae for changes to the Codex, she instead came up with a system to disguise entries--in effect, to hide them. I gave her a simple task of alchemical preparation of a calix of gold, and instead she seized the opportunity to try combining mercury, vitriol, common salt, and sal ammoniac to create a virulent mixture to melt the thinnest part of her collar. She was unsuccessful, of course, and is being treated for a burn, but the concern is that she came very close to discovering a compound that might work.

  I've set her to work, supervised, on the boring task of transcribing official messages into the books, but I don't dare put anyone with her for long. The little criminal can be quite disarming. I realize that giving her access to some of the messages might be dangerous; she still retains her allegiance, as far as I can determine, to Scholar Wolfe and all her fellow students. But, believe me, she'll do far less damage with pen and paper than with alchemical preparations.

  And for the love of Horus, keep her well away from anything to do with translation. I shudder to think how we could hold on to the girl if she was able to translate herself away from here.

  She continues her resistance to the rules of the Tower, but I have determined, through the proper charts and analysis, that her ideal time for propagation will come soon. I have not warned her of this. Gods know what she would do to avoid doing her duty.

  I know you are sensitive on this subject, Obscurist, so forgive me for my frankness, but I still feel you give the girls too much freedom in this matter, allowing them three refusals before they undergo the compulsory procedure.

  She has, of course, already used up all three of these refusals.

  Your faithful servant, Gregory

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Alexandrian black market had two obvious faces. The more public one, known as the shadow market, sold illegal but harmless copies of common Library volumes--punishable, at worst, with fines and short prison stays. It catered to those who wanted a book purely for the criminal thrill of it, even if the book was shoddily transcribed and incomplete, as they often were.

  A smuggler called Red Ibrahim presided over the darker, more private end of the trade, and he was legendary well beyond the city; his reputation was spoken of even in Jess's house back in London. He was a cousin, someone in the trade you could rely on in a pinch and for a price. Jess had actual blood cousins in the trade, but the main tests to becoming a trade cousin were long-term success and a certain ruthless loyalty to fellow smugglers. They were bound--pun intended, he supposed--by the business of books, of history set in leather and paper.

  Forbidden fruits.

  For months, Jess had steadily dealt with a succession of Red Ibrahim's subordinates--he had a network of at least thirty--and found them all cold-eyed and capable. His Brightwell bona fides had been checked again and again at every stage; he was, after all, a High Garda soldier, wearing the copper band of service to the Library, even if he was a smuggler by birth. Reconciling that and earning trust, even with the Brightwell name, had been a tricky job.

  Tonight, as he walked, his initial directions wrote themselves out into his Codex in the Brightwell family code, and he immediately erased them. He visited a market stall, where he was told verbally to go to another shop, and then to a third, a darkened bar where sailors cursed at one another over dice games and a proprietor slipped him a paper note. The route took him halfway across the city, and his legs were truly aching by the time five words scribed themselves in his Codex: Knock on the blue door.

  He stopped, put the book away, and looked at the houses on the street where he stood. They were neat rectangles painted in pale shades, with Egyptian decorations at the roofs and fluted columns in miniature on the porticos. Respectable homes for modestly well-off families, something a silver-band Scholar might own, perhaps.

  There was a house with a dark blue door on the right, and he stepped through the square gate and passed through a garden of herbs shaded by a spreading acacia tree. An ornamental pond cradled lazy fish and large lotus plants. It was a traditional household, with Egyptian household god statues in a niche by the door, and he made the required respect to them before he knocked.

  The man who opened the door was nondescript--not young, not old, not tall or short or thin or fat. A native Egyptian, almost certainly, with sharp, dark eyes and skin with a rich coppery sheen. The local fashion was to shave all body hair, even eyebrows, and this man clearly abided by it.

  "Jess Brightwell," he said, and smiled. "I'm honored. Be welcome to my home." He stepped back to allow Jess entry, and closed the door behind him. It had a significant lock, and Red Ibrahim engaged it immediately. "We've heard much about each other, I'm sure."

  "I expected you to be ginger," Jess said. The man raised what would have been his eyebrows. "Sorry. English term. Red haired, I mean."

  "I am not called Red for that."

  "Then for what?"

  Ibrahim smiled, just enough to send a chill down Jess's back. "A story for another time, I think. Please."
The man--Jess placed him at about forty, but he could have been younger, or even older--gestured to a small, dainty divan, and Jess sat. A young girl with straight black hair worn in a shoulder-length cut walked in with a tray of delicate coffee cups and a silver urn. She was maybe fourteen years old, petite and pretty, and smiled at Jess as she poured for both of them.

  She took a seat on the divan at the other end from Jess, to his surprise.

  "This is my daughter, Anit. The gods have smiled upon my house, and she is an intelligent girl who wishes to study the trade. Do you mind if she listens?"

  "No objection," Jess said. He remembered his father doing the same for him and his twin brother, Brendan, though he didn't recall either of them having much of a choice. "It took quite a while to arrange to see you."

  "Yes, of course, and I mean no offense by my caution. Does your father, the excellent Callum, receive every stranger claiming to be in the trade?" Red Ibrahim handed him a cup so small it felt like a child's toy in Jess's fingers, but the coffee inside was sweet and potent enough to make his heart race after only a sip. "Or does he ensure his business's--and his family's--safety by being wary?"

  "He's a careful man," Jess agreed, though he remembered his father ruthlessly risking him, and his brothers, without much thought for the consequences. His older brother, Liam, had swung from a gallows for the careful way his father did business. "He wants to obtain some information, and you're the best positioned to have it at your fingertips. It's a delicate matter, of course."

  "Of course," Ibrahim agreed. "Naturally." He waited with polite attention.

  "Automata," Jess said.

  "There are no truly rare versions of Heron's work, as you no doubt know--"

  "Not interested in rare volumes," Jess said. "We're looking for books that describe the inner workings of the creatures. And how to disable them."

  Red Ibrahim was in the act of drinking his coffee, and though he hesitated an instant, he finished so smoothly Jess almost missed the reaction. Almost. Then he laughed, and it sounded completely natural. "Do you know how often this request is made, young Brightwell? The automata are the enemies of both smugglers and Burners in every city on earth! Do you not think that if such information was available, we would have obtained it and made an incredible fortune with it by now?"