“I heard the Artifex Magnus is inspecting the Serapeum there,” someone else offered. There were nods and more serious expressions; they all knew the Artifex was a prime target for the Burners, who were the principal enemy they had to fear these days.
The Artifex was also the red right hand of the Archivist. He might not be the second most powerful in the Library—that honor went to Wolfe’s mother, the Obscurist Magnus—but the Artifex ran a close third. If the Archivist ordered someone dead, it was the Artifex who arranged for the murder.
And they would be guarding him from threats. Ironic.
Jess shut his eyes for a moment, ignoring the chatter around him, and then reached in his bag and pulled out his Codex. He opened it to a specific page, the page where Morgan’s messages appeared, and took out a stylus. He wrote down, in flowing, tight letters, They’re sending us to Rome. Is it a trap? Please answer. I need you to answer. Please.
The words stayed for a moment and then faded away. The page was blank.
The page stayed blank.
“Put that away,” the man across from him said. “No messages on missions.”
Jess should have known that. He nodded and put the Codex away, and tried to hope that being sent to Rome was just some lucky, happy coincidence.
He was too cynical to believe it for long.
“On your feet!”
Jess hadn’t realized he’d slept until the squad leader’s shout roared over him, amplified by the very suddenness of it; he jerked awake and was up fast enough that he banged his head on the low ceiling of the carrier. It had stopped moving, though he could feel the faint vibration of the steam engine still working. The impact was hard enough to make his vision spark, and the pain radiated through the top of his head like an acid bath, but he grimly stumbled out after Glain, into what proved to be a heavily walled courtyard large enough to hold all the vehicles and the soldiers disembarking from them, but only just. Overhead, the sky had turned a teal that told him twilight was approaching, the day well gone. He’d slept a long time. He supposed he’d needed it, but he’d missed meals and—most important now—a latrine.
Wherever they were, it wasn’t Rome, but it also didn’t feel like Alexandria. On the smooth surface of the courtyard there were drifts of fine dirt that crunched under his boots as he turned to see the soaring structure of a pyramid-shaped building. A Serapeum, a daughter branch of the Library. This one was made of searingly white stone, with a slice of gold at the top that he realized, on squinting, was a spire holding up the Library’s seal. The shadows drowning half the courtyard seemed deeper than usual.
He formed up with the squad, and the Blue Dog squad leader—he still didn’t know the young man’s name—moved quickly down the line to inspect them. He was shorter than Jess but radiated a commanding presence that made Jess straighten just a bit more.
“Where are we, sir?” That was Glain, surprisingly.
Even more surprisingly, the squad leader seemed willing to answer. “We’re at the port city of Darnah. Ships are waiting to take most of the company, but we lucky few will be going on with the captain directly.”
“Directly,” Glain said. “You mean by Translation.”
The squad leader grinned, dispelling all his years and authority in one flash of teeth . . . and then getting it back in the next instant as he said, “Exactly what I mean. Move. Consider this an honor. We’re in the advance guard of the Artifex Magnus today.”
The arrogant old man was making Niccolo Santi guard him. It was a deliberate insult; there was no doubt of that. The Artifex had been the one to take Wolfe to prison and oversee his . . . conversion, just as he’d taken Thomas. It had to be a constant struggle for Santi not to shoot the bastard in the back.
If Santi can stand it, I can, Jess told himself. He tightened the straps on his pack and followed Glain down the wide tunnel that ran at a slant beneath the Serapeum.
No doubt parts of this vast pyramid were devoted to spacious, beautiful areas where the public could browse the Codex and load up Blanks with texts; librarians would be working, serene and helpful. A Scholar or two might be conducting his own research in a secret archive of local documents. There would be reading spaces, light, and beautiful views from the windows. That would be the public face of the Library, the one that even Jess had always known.
That was not the Library he saw here in the tunnels. As the majority of Santi’s troops continued down the stone-walled hall beneath the pyramid and headed for the docks, Santi led them off to the right, down a narrower passage lit by flickering glows above. The glows were chemical, an older style, and sputtered unsteadily with a greenish cast to them. It made all the faces of Jess’s companions seem eerily lifeless.