“You must be sure,” she told him. “If it’s a trap . . .”
She wasn’t saying how much she’d lose for it, but he was acutely aware. “We need to find records of where the Library likes to keep its most dangerous prisoners,” he said. “I’m just not sure how to get to them—and that’s where you come in, I think. You’re the best researcher I know, Khalila.”
“Without a doubt.” She had the sweetest smile, one that dimpled just at the corner to let him know she was silently mocking him. “And you want me to proceed?”
“Carefully. Khalila, I mean it: carefully.”
“Of course. I understand the risks.” She paused for a moment, then came to sit next to him again, hands folded in her lap. “Jess—having been here in the Lighthouse for the past few months, I have heard . . . disturbing things about Scholar Wolfe. That he may not be himself, or—”
“A few books short of a full library?” Jess finished, and was rewarded with a nod. “It’s true: he went through terrible things before we met him, and they left scars. But I don’t think he’s broken beyond repair, and I think we can count on him. All this makes sense. Thomas had—has—too good a mind for the Library to just discard. They’ll want to use him. Isn’t that logical?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Or it’s just difficult for us to believe the arrogance that would destroy such a beautiful mind. Such a . . . such a beautiful person as Thomas.” That thought killed another of her lovely smiles, and Jess hurt to see it.
“We have two choices,” he said. “We can choose to believe he’s dead or choose to believe he’s alive. Believing he’s dead is safer, but—”
“But so cruel,” she whispered. “What if he’s alive? Suffering? Thinking we will come for him, and we never do?”
Jess nodded. It never left his mind for long, the idea that somewhere, Thomas Schreiber was counting on him for rescue. “That’s why I can’t let this go, Khalila, trap or no trap. I just can’t. I won’t ask you to do anything more than a little research—”
“Don’t be stupid,” she interrupted, and that smile returned, more certain—and more devilish—than before. “Of course I will do everything I can; it’s the only honorable thing to do. It might take time. I say that not because I am afraid to jeopardize myself, but because wrong moves will only get me locked away from key information. It will have to be done slowly, for all our sakes. But when it’s time to get him out, Jess, I will go with you, of course. You don’t even have to ask.”
There had been a tightly tied knot of stress in his chest, and he felt it give way under a wave of relief. And then another tension set in. Worry. “I mean it: be careful. Thomas—I don’t want to explain why they took him; that would only put you at more risk. But they’ll do anything to keep what he discovered from being known. I don’t want you joining him somewhere in the dark, being—”
“Convinced?” she finished for him, with a sharp arch to her brows. “Yes, I would like to avoid that, too. I don’t think I’d be very brave.”
He doubted that. Khalila had a soul like a diamond—fiery, brilliant, and difficult to scratch. Even diamonds could shatter, though, and he didn’t want to be the cause of such an awful thing. “I mean it,” Jess said. “Don’t trust anyone. Someone tried to kill Wolfe yesterday, and they didn’t care how many others died with him. Just like when we were postulants.”
“Someone?” she asked, and gave him a slight tilt of her head. “Jess. Don’t treat me like a fool. We both know who would be behind a thing like that.”
“The Archivist,” he said. “Not that we’d ever manage to prove it. There’ll be a whole chain of disposable puppets, and he’ll already have cut any strings that lead back to him.”
She was silent for a moment, staring out the window at the view—at the towering pyramid of the Serapeum, he realized, whose gold top caught the morning light and blazed like a second sun. “Such a tragedy. The Library was meant to be a light lifted against the darkness,” she said. “But we’ve lost our way. We’re wandering in the shadows. That has to change.”
It has to change. Morgan had said the same thing many times, and he heard the echo of her frustration in Khalila’s voice. “Well, if that’s going to change,” he said, “then we’re the ones who will have to see it done.”
“Because revolution rarely comes from those in charge.” She turned her head back to him, and the smile was firmly back in place. “Yes. I read history. But we shouldn’t be talking in abstracts and philosophy, Jess. How have you been? It’s an injustice, you being wasted in the High Garda. You deserve so much more!”
He grinned. “I’ve done all right,” he said. “You know me. I survive.”
“You shouldn’t have to simply survive!”
“They tell me suffering builds character,” he said. “Glain’s turned out to be a right good leader, by the way. She’ll climb the ranks fast, I’ve no doubt.”