She had the same severe look as Wolfe, when she wanted to use it. “Do, please, tell me what my plans are, young man. I’m sure it will be very informative.” He could just hear Wolfe saying that, in exactly the same tone, and though Jess didn’t mean to, it made him laugh. Bitterly.
“Oh, leave them alone,” Wolfe said without turning. “I know exactly what your plans are. Mother. And I can promise you, we won’t cooperate in the least.”
There was a breathless silence for a moment, and then the Obscurist walked away, toward the stairs where she’d entered. “Gregory will see to your accommodations,” she said without looking back. “Morgan. Your collar will be replaced. It has to be done, so please don’t injure yourself resisting.”
Morgan stared at the woman’s back as if she wanted to plant a knife in it. Her hand gripped Jess’s again tightly. He was lucky it was the one without a bandage.
Gregory walked over to stand in front of the two of them and said with a calm smile, “Now, let’s be reasonable about this. You can either submit gracefully or submit when you lose the fight, and your friends end up suffering for it. All right?”
He held up his hand, and another Obscurist moved forward to put a wooden box in his palm. When Gregory opened it, Jess saw it held one of the golden collars. He felt Morgan’s bone-deep shiver of revulsion and took in a slow breath. “You don’t have to,” he told her. “Just tell me the word.”
“No,” she whispered. “It won’t do any good, Jess. I don’t want any of you hurt.”
Morgan stood up, closed her eyes, and stayed very still as Gregory clasped the collar around her neck and the symbols on the golden surface shimmered and shifted, and the latch just . . . disappeared.
Morgan sank down again beside him as if all the strength had drained out of her, and he put his arm around her waist. “Easy,” he whispered to her. “I’m right here.”
He turned his head and was suddenly, intensely aware that she was here, next to him, real. Being separated for months hadn’t dulled the impact of her presence on him, or—he thought—of his on her. A burning wave of hot and cold swept over him, and he thought, I can’t let them have her. I can’t. It had been different before, but here, seeing the mute, horrible misery in her eyes and the defeat . . . He understood how much she hated this place, rich and splendid as it seemed to be. He didn’t altogether understand why, but there was no denying it.
Gregory casually poured himself another cup of tea from the pot, sipped, and made a face. “Gone cold,” he said. “Too bad. You know, Morgan, you’d do well to be cautious. Keria Morning is the most powerful woman in the world.”
“I don’t care who she is,” Jess said. “Morgan is coming with us when we leave this place. And we will be leaving.”
Gregory laughed so hard, he slopped tea from the side of his cup. “You, boy, are one to watch. I might watch you end very badly, but at least it will be a good show.” He put the cup aside. “Come on. I’ll show you to your quarters. The good news is that there is plenty of space here, so you each get your own room.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“I wish I could even begin to guess the extent of it.” Gregory sounded dry and uninterested, but Jess couldn’t imagine that the man wasn’t some kind of important personage within the Iron Tower. He did notice that as they stood up, Morgan kept tight hold of Jess’s hand, and moved quickly away from Gregory as soon as the chance presented itself. She doesn’t like him. That’s telling.
“I hope Glain will be all right,” Khalila said, as she helped Thomas up.
“She’s in good hands,” Wolfe said, turning in a storm of black robes to stride back to them. “The Tower gets the best of everything the Library has to offer.”
“Except freedom,” Morgan said. He turned to look at her, and she dropped her gaze.
“Except that,” he agreed.
Gregory said, “Come on, then,” and led the way out.
Jess supposed he shouldn’t have been astonished by the interior of the Iron Tower, but he was, and felt as much of a bumpkin gone to market as he had on his first day in Alexandria.
The tower’s central core held rooms. The garden room and Translation Chamber—which sat atop everything else—stretched across the entire expanse from side to side. Beneath that, stairs wound in a flat spiral around the outer walls of the tower, and Jess could feel the warmth of the Alexandrian sun radiating through the metal skin—muted, but not completely gone. Nevertheless, it was cool inside, an artificial sort of coolness that puzzled him, until he felt a breeze from a grate blowing unnaturally cool air. He mentioned it to Thomas, who nodded. “It’s like the heated air we use in the winter,” he said. “Here, heat is as much the enemy as our cold.”
“I can understand heat, but how do you cool air down? Ice?”