Jess rolled off the couch and to his feet, and felt only a little unsteady—mostly from the beating he’d taken back in Rome—and saw an Obscurist sitting on a nearby folding chair. He was an older man, with handsome, sharp features that spoke of Eastern Europe, possibly Russia, and he nodded calmly at Jess. “Put the weapon down, please,” he said. “You may, of course, keep it if it makes you comfortable. Just don’t point it at me.”
Jess was still clutching his weapon in a nervous grip, but the man’s quiet assurance made him feel a little ashamed of that. He angled the gun down. The Obscurist nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Now sit down. There’s tea.”
The garden room stretched high in an arch, but it wasn’t open to the sun; light poured in from windows that circled the round walls, and from them Jess saw the familiar layout of the city of Alexandria—this time from a very great height. The only building that rose higher was the Serapeum, and he could see the tip of the pyramid stretching up another giant’s reach above this place.
The garden around him spread out huge and bursting with colors, and it gave him a sense of the incredible scale of this tower. He’d always known it was huge, but never quite this large.
A city in its own right, surely.
Jess sat down on a bench and poured himself a cup of hot tea from the waiting pot; his hands were steady enough to hold it now, at least. As he drank, Glain came through. She arrived unconscious, and blood leaked in thick drips from the sodden cloth of her uniform’s trouser leg onto the couch. The Obscurist stood up, suddenly very tall and active, and went to her side. He pressed a silver symbol on his collar and said, “I need Medica here in the Translation Chamber. Now.” He picked Glain up—and she was not a light burden, Jess knew—and moved her to a clear spot on the floor, then clamped a strong hand over the wound in her leg to slow the loss of blood. “You’ll need to assist your other friends,” he told Jess. “I’m Gregory, by the way.”
“Jess Brightwell, sir,” Jess said. “Thank you.” This all seemed so strange. He’d expected to arrive in a dark, forbidding world filled with angry soldiers ready to take them down, or, at least, in a place no better than the torture chamber beneath the basilica. But there was a kindly man and tea, flowers, and a Medica team hurrying now into the garden to tend to Glain. Maybe they had no idea they were welcoming fugitives, sworn enemies of the Archivist. Maybe word hadn’t come here at all, and once it did, the bars would finally close in on them.
He drank all the tea quickly, just in case. It was the first liquid he’d had in what seemed like hours, and he was severely thirsty. His uniform hung heavy with sweat and bloody from cuts. The one on his palm had split open again, and he took out his field kit and wrapped it in a fresh bandage. He was tying it off as Khalila came through. She seemed as dazed as he still felt by their new surroundings, and he got up to help her to the bench and pour her a cup of tea.
“What is this?” she asked, as if she truly couldn’t comprehend it. Her head scarf had come askew, and strands of her glossy, dark hair showed around her face. She dragged it off and repinned it without the slightest self-consciousness, as if he were family. He appreciated that. “Where are we? Is this the Iron Tower? I thought—”
“You thought it would be grimmer,” said Gregory, the Obscurist, as he got to his feet and came to them. “Well, you wouldn’t be alone in that, I’m sure. But it is our home, and we make it as pleasant as we can. How many of you will there be?”
“If we all make it through? Four more.” Dario’s loss seemed greater now, their decision to leave without him even worse. He knew that was what Khalila was thinking, too. He could see it in the miserable hunch of her shoulders. “Dario will be all right, Khalila. He’s clever.”
“I know,” she said. “And he does know Rome. He spent time there when he was younger. His father was an ambassador for Spain.” Jess had always known Dario came from wealth and influence, but not quite that much influence. “I think, if he were in real trouble, he would go to the embassy. They would hide him, at the very least, and get him back to Spain, where his family could find him a safe place. But I think he’ll want to find us again.”
“You mean, find you again,” Jess said. “I doubt he gives a rusty geneih about my future.”
“You wrong him. You always do.” He put an arm around her, and she sighed and relaxed against him, just a little. “I missed this. Being together. You’ve always been like a brother to me, from the moment I met you.”
“Ouch,” he said, but eased it with a smile. “I never had designs on you, Khalila. I like being someone you can rely on, as much as I rely on you.”
“Jess. You don’t rely on anyone.”
“I do,” he said. “It comes as a surprise to me, too.”