“The fires have already started.” Imogen stared in the direction of the harbor, where smoke twisted in mangled black pillars, wind stretching it thin. Haze crept across the horizon, clung to the silhouette of the ancient world’s seventh wonder: the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Far could see Poseidon’s likeness on top from half a city away. The god’s trident stabbed the sky, trying to bleed it blue again.
“Are we too late?” The least of Far’s worries, and a mammoth one.
“The flames haven’t reached the docks yet,” Eliot said, adjusting the drape of her stola. “We have time.”
For once.
Far fluffed his toga. “How do I look?”
His cousin’s arms were full of fur—securing Saffron so he wouldn’t bolt into BC Egypt. She hugged the red panda close as she studied Far’s outfit. “Appropriately ancient.”
Priya drew near. Her shoulder to his, cheek against cheek. “Be careful. Your life isn’t worth a few papers.”
She kissed him in the doorway to a city in flames, their bodies melting together in two-sided surrender. Far forgot the sting of smoke, the taste of ashes. For a moment the world was her—all her. Priya lingered even when her lips left, their eyelashes close to tangling.
“You might want to start hauling tail.” Imogen was gazing out of the hatch again, sunlight playing iridescent off her hair. “That smoke’s getting wickeder by the minute.”
Far turned to Gram. “Vigilance!”
“Vigilance.” They nodded at each other as most boys do: quick and curt. “Good luck, Far.”
Normally Far laughed such tokenisms off—Luck-schmuck! He made his own fate!—but he kept his lips pressed tight as he faced the warring city. Imogen was right; the smoke was already worse, thunderstorm thick. Flecks of ash had begun falling onto clay-tile rooftops. Desert snow.
They had to get moving.
Three, two, one. Mission: Rescue Scrolls from Inferno is a go.
The team dispersed: Imogen and Gram to their console stations, Priya waiting by the hatch to close it. Eliot’s wig fluttered against acrid wind as she stepped into the street. Far followed her into Alexandria’s royal quarter. North and west, where the smoke was thickest. The way the girl moved reminded Far of a rat in a maze—one that ran the course from memory. She turned corners with automatic precision, sought out side alleys that he never would’ve spotted at first glance. Scurry, scurry, hurry!
The city’s syncretic beauty—statues of Egyptian deities nestled alongside classic Greek structures—passed in a blur. The Invictus was already well in the pair’s wake by the time Imogen was settled enough to provide directions.
“Hades, Eliot’s hauling tail! Where are you guys?”
“You’re the one who’s supposed to tell me!” Thank Crux the Romans believed in underwear, for while Far hated tight pants, he wasn’t a fan of going commando, either. Especially in an airy toga. Especially, especially when running was involved.
Dust licked their heels as they dashed past old gods still new. Horse-drawn chariots. Columns wrapped in hieroglyphs. Roman centurions in full regalia. This was the feeling Far traveled for. The exhilaration of running through an age not his own, battle-shout harsh on the air, a stranger among the strange. He wondered if Eliot felt it, too—the thrill of being where they shouldn’t, the bending of time beneath every step.
She halted. Far followed suit, though everything inside him kept lurching.
They’d reached the library.
Like many of Alexandria’s buildings, the library was built in a style that honored both its Greek patrons and the Egyptian soil beneath it. Stately columns were guarded by statelier sphinxes. Stairs led to a courtyard flanked on either side by extensions of the symmetrical main building. Three stories made doubly magnificent by the courtyard’s reflecting pool.
This is the last time anyone will see this sight. The library’s edifice, and some of its collection, would survive the fire, but it would never be the same. This was the dusk of its old glory, moment before ruin.
Imogen saw the same view, shared the same sentiment. “Crux, that’s beautiful….”
Smoke billowed heavier than devil’s breath over Far’s shoulder. Ruin had risen; it was well on its way. Eliot didn’t even glance toward the approaching flames. Ashes that should’ve caught on eyelashes tumbled down her cheeks instead. Her eyes pierced across the waters, past the columns, through doors, almost as if she was searching for something….
They were searching, Far reminded himself. “Let’s be quick about this. You collect Berossus’s Babylonaica. I’ll go for Sappho. We’ll meet back here in five—”
“Sappho’s mine!” Eliot was already running up the staircase, past a crowd of gaunt, scholarly-looking men at the courtyard’s edge. All were too focused on the building wall of smoke to notice her.
“Go, team!” Imogen muttered. “Guess we got Babylonaica, which means you’ll be going to the right. Southeast corner. Try not to trip over any librarians. Notice most of them are wearing chitons. I’m starting to second-guess the toga choice.”
Eliot had reached the main entrance, its hungry doorway swallowing her. Far wished invisibility on himself as he clattered up the steps, past the onlookers. Again, flames won out. Why were they just standing there? Why weren’t they doing something? Maybe they didn’t know what to do, in the face of something so massive. It was a feeling Far could relate to, with so many fires of his own: amnesia and Eliot and keeping his ship and completing this half-baked mission.
One step at a time. He moved across the courtyard, through the doorway, into the library.
Doomed sterling light fell through glassless windows, magnifying the building’s magnitude. The sight was foot-stopping, breath-seizing. There were gods here, too—Greek, Egyptian, painted, carved—standing between the pillars, guarding books they could not actually protect. Imogen had told them there were nearly half a million scrolls in the library’s collection. The count sounded make-believe, zeros on a screen. Only now, with his chin tilted high as he took in row after row of shelves, did Far understand the breadth of it. The smell of papyrus was overwhelming. So much of it had been etched with ink, rolled tight, and placed onto diamond-shaped shelves. Histories, poetry, philosophical revelations, epics, so many thousands of years of progress…
All about to burn.
“To the right,” Imogen reminded him.
Far’s footsteps didn’t even echo against the floor stones, such was the library’s size. He passed a likeness of Anubis—pointy ears, fangs of a dog, torso of a man—and started down the row. He wasn’t alone. There were people who’d taken the smoke for the warning it was, desperate to save what they could, gathering as many scrolls as their arms could carry. Far found himself hoping that the Babylonaica was on one of the higher shelves, less likely to get pilfered by random passersby.
“Imogen, talk to me. What am I looking for?”
His cousin sounded just as lost. “Hold on….”
Far narrowly missed a collision at the end of a row. The other patron swerved, dropped a scroll, but did not stop. Probably wise. Smoke was slithering through the windows, steadier and steadier. Soon it would get hard to breathe….