Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)
Rachel Caine
EPHEMERA
Excerpt from a report delivered via secure message to the Archivist Magister, from the hand of the Artifex
I thought that you were being soft when you ordered us to keep the boy alive, but he’s been incredibly useful already. As you said, a brilliant mind. When we allow him access to books and papers, which we do as a reward, his observations on engineering are quite groundbreaking. After compelling him using the usual means, we provided him with chalk, and on the walls of his cell he began to write some unusual calculations and diagrams. These I have enclosed for your review.
He also had observations, which he confided to a guard I had ordered to be friendly to him, about the maintenance of the automata within the prison. Clever boy. And dangerous. He might have succeeded in turning one of them to his own uses if we hadn’t kept a constant watch.
I know you want to keep him alive, but even after this long, he continues to be outwardly cooperative and inwardly quite stubborn. I haven’t seen the like since . . . well, since his mentor, Scholar Christopher Wolfe.
As bright as he is, I don’t know how we can ever control him completely. It would be far kinder to kill him now.
Reply from the Archivist Magister, via secure message
Under no circumstances are you to kill the boy.
I have great plans for him.
CHAPTER ONE
Every day, Jess Brightwell passed the Spartan warrior statue on his way to and from his quarters. It was a beautifully made automaton, fluid and deadly, with a skin of burnished copper. It stood in a dynamic pose on its pedestal, with a spear ready to thrust, and was both a decoration and a protection against intruders.
It wasn’t supposed to be a threat to those who belonged here.
Now, as he passed it, the shadowed eyes under the helmet flickered and flared red, and the Spartan’s head turned to track his passage. Jess felt the burn of those eyes, but he didn’t return the stare. It would take only an instant for that form to move and that spear to drive right through him. He could feel the very spot the point would enter like a red, tingling target on his back.
Not now! Jess sweated, terribly aware of the leather smuggling harness strapped to his chest, and the slender original book hidden inside. Calm. Be calm. It was incredibly difficult, not only because of the threat of the automaton but because of the anger that burned inside him. As he walked away, the tingle in his back rose to a hot burn, and he waited for the rush of movement and the horrible invasion of the spear stabbing through his body . . . But then he was a step past, two steps, and the attack didn’t come.
When he looked back, the statue had gone back to resting mode, staring straight ahead blindly. It seemed safe. It wasn’t. Jess Brightwell lived on sufferance and luck at the Great Library of Alexandria. If he’d been half as clever as his friend Thomas Schreiber, he would have figured out how to disable these things by now . . .
Don’t think about Thomas. Thomas is dead. You have to keep that thought firm in your head or you’ll never make it through this.
Jess paused in the dark, cool tunnel that led from the Spartan’s entrance into the wider precincts of the complex where he was quartered. There was no one here to watch him, no fellow travelers at either end of the tunnel. The automaton couldn’t see him. Here, for this one sheltered moment, he could allow himself to feel.
Anger sparked red and violent inside, heated his skin and tensed his muscles, and the tears that stung his eyes were driven by rage as much as grief. You lied, Artifex, he thought. You lying, cruel, evil bastard. The book in the harness on his chest was proof of everything he’d hoped for the past six months. But hope was a malicious, jagged thing, all spikes and razors that churned and cut deep in his guts. Hope was a great deal like fear.
Jess bounced his head against the stones behind him, again, again, again, until he could get control of the anger. He forced it back into a black box, buried deep, and secured it with chains of will, then wiped his face clear. It was morning, still so early that dawn blushed the horizon, and he was tired out of his skin. He’d been chasing the book he smuggled now for weeks, giving up meals, giving up rest, and finally he’d found it. It had cost him an entire night’s sleep. He’d not eaten, except for a quick gyro from a Greek street vendor nearly eight hours past. He’d spent the rest of the time hiding in an abandoned building and reading the book three times, cover to cover, until he had every single detail etched hot into his memory.
Jess felt gritty with exhaustion and trembled with hunger, but he knew what he had to do.