“You think too small, Jess. High Garda soldiers die in combat. A nicely staged Burner attack, some conveniently destroyed bodies, and no one but Christopher will ever doubt the story.” His hands, which had been resting on the bench on either side of him, clenched the lip of the marble and tightened, until his knuckles were almost the same pale shade. “We’re hostages for Wolfe’s good behavior, at best. And through him, his mother’s. I don’t think this is so much about us or him as it is a power struggle between those two.”
Wolfe’s mother, the Obscurist Magnus, was a formidable woman, but trapped by her own power. Her influence didn’t extend to freeing herself or those locked away with her. At the same time, the Obscurists had a fragile hold over the Library; without them, the essential components—the Codex, the Blanks, even the automata—ceased to operate properly.
The Artifex would use Wolfe to keep her in check—and the rest of them as leverage against Wolfe.
“I suppose you were assigned the honor of escorting the Artifex at the last minute, too,” Khalila said to Santi. He nodded. “I’m sorry. I know it’s difficult for you.”
“I’ve defended Scholars I loved and Scholars I hated. Just part of the job,” he said. “I defend an idea, not an individual.”
“None of that matters now,” Dario said. “The Artifex sees us as chess pieces he can move as he wishes, and, eventually, he’ll knock us off the board one by one, if not all at once. Are we just waiting to be killed?”
Santi said nothing. Did nothing. Jess stayed quiet as he watched him; he could see the man thinking, weighing, calculating odds and tactics. This was Santi’s specialty, the art of war. Surprise and defense.
“No,” he finally said. “We can’t wait. Dario’s correct. We’re in a position of great weakness—away from home, easily disposed of. I think bringing us here was a demonstration of his power. He can’t know we’ve found out anything.”
“We haven’t,” Khalila murmured. “Not for certain.”
“We have,” Jess said. He took a deep breath and told them about the information he’d received from Anit. “Thomas is here. He is definitely here. Now.”
“Do you trust her?” Khalila asked.
“She wouldn’t have any reason to betray me,” Jess said. “Our families are old trading partners. Throw me to the lions, and she has the Brightwell clan to deal with after. Her father wouldn’t want that.”
Santi nodded slowly. He looked up at them, and the anger in his face was chilling. “Then we can’t wait. We must get Thomas and get out of here. I’ll send word to Christopher to join us, and we’ll have to go into hiding, immediately. Jess? Can you arrange that with your family?”
Leave the Library. He saw Khalila and Dario exchange looks. They’d had to know this was coming, but it was all happening—and Jess surely felt it, too—so fast. “Not Khalila,” Dario said. “Surely no one would suspect her of anything. She could go back afterward . . .”
Khalila cut him off. “Dario. You don’t decide on my behalf. I love the Library. I grew up believing I would spend my life serving it. But that ideal, the one they made us believe, it doesn’t exist. I would rather spend my life fighting to change it. I can’t continue to pretend to be loyal to it, not if all of you are gone!”
“Maybe that Library, the one we all believed in, maybe that could exist after all,” Jess said. “It’s not the idea that’s bad; it’s thousands of years of bad decisions and desperation. We could change that, but we can’t do it from Alexandria.” He swallowed hard and glanced at Santi before he took the last step. The last risk. “The reason Thomas was taken was that he invented a machine to cheaply and easily reproduce books. If we can get him, if we can build it and start distributing private books, it will change everything.”
Glain, Khalila, and Dario all looked blank. “I can call up any book I like from the Codex,” Dario said. “What use is something to make them, except to benefit smugglers like . . . well, like you, who can sell them to hoarders?”
“Sounds like a Burner invention,” Glain added, frowning.
“It isn’t. And you think the Codex is your doorway into the Library? It’s a little box they hand you—a curated, careful selection. They tell you what you can read. The Library shows you a fraction of what they have—trust me, I’ve seen tens of thousands of books go through my family’s hands that never appeared on the Codex and never will. If we believe in the existence of the Black Archives, then we must believe that the Library hides what they think is dangerous—and it’s old and conservative, and it believes anything can be misused.”
Khalila stared at him, but her mind was flying; he could almost see the thoughts and connections colliding. “That explains a lot,” she said. “There are holes in the progress being made, the science, if you look hard enough. And I have been gently warned away from certain questions. It explains everything if that research disappears into the Black Archives.”