CHAPTER 30
Close to the End
The scream was followed by a hammering sound—bang, bang, bang—like a battering ram.
Sefia and Archer raced toward the noise, through the winding servants’ passageways, until they burst into a hall of glass and polished stone. At one end stood a throne; at the other, a set of great barricaded doors that strained their hinges with every blow from the other side.
Bang! Bang!
One bank of windows overlooked the harbor, where the Alliance soldiers were disembarking from their blue ships, marching into the capital waving their flags.
By the windows lay a body. It wore a gold crown set with five blue jewels.
Stonegold. Director of the Guard.
As Sefia approached, she could see that much of his torso was gone, eaten away as if by acid, with winking gold buttons here and there among the sizzling flesh and deteriorating bones, and Archer’s sword tilting out of the corpse like a broken mast.
Archer pulled out his blade, examining the steel for traces of poison.
“She framed us,” Sefia said, kneeling. They could still get what they came for. Gingerly, she began picking through the king’s pockets—or what remained of them—searching for the vault key.
Her hands were going for Stonegold’s neck, where a gold chain was visible through a part in his collar, when Tanin burst into the throne room with a squad of soldiers in tow.
No, not soldiers. They had scarred necks. Candidates.
Sefia’s fingers closed around the chain and she gave it a tug as she stood. The links parted, and a little key came loose from the remnants of the king’s ruined uniform. Quickly, she spooled it into her palm, hoping Tanin hadn’t noticed.
But Tanin’s silver eyes were on the sword in Archer’s hand. “You killed the Director,” she rasped.
Before either Sefia or Archer could protest, the candidates came rushing toward them, quick and agile. Bullets sped through the air. Tanin disappeared and reappeared between them in an instant, the First’s bloodsword in her hands.
Archer’s blade clashed against Tanin’s as he and Sefia were driven apart. Summoning her magic, Sefia pushed Tanin away from him, deflected bullets, wrenched candidates aside.
At last, the woman turned on Sefia. While the candidates flooded toward Archer, Tanin advanced, bloodsword extended.
Sefia expected the woman to speak—to taunt her, to say something. But Tanin was silent as her copper blade, tinted with red in the last light of the sunset. She attacked. Sefia dodged, still pulling candidates away from Archer.
But they kept slipping her magic. They swarmed Archer, swords flashing. He backed toward the throne, parrying and countering, his blade finding wrists and exposed legs, his bullets finding shoulders and sides.
But he wasn’t killing anyone.
A bullet grazed his shoulder. He faltered.
Thrusting Tanin aside, Sefia teleported to him. She landed, shakily, on the steps to the throne, with the candidates closing in.
Archer’s arms went around her.
Oxscini might have been lost. Four kingdoms might have fallen to the Guard. But now she and Archer had the key to the vault.
They could strike back.
The streams of the Illuminated world ran before her like a flood, and with a wave of her arms, she teleported them away.
Once they’d retrieved the explosives from their cabin aboard the Brother, they appeared with a soft thud beside a bronze statue, its face stern. All around him, Archer could smell the odor of varnished wood, tanned leather, ancient paper. From the stained glass ceiling, dusky light filtered through the tall shelves, casting shadows like prison bars along the elaborately patterned floor.
So this was the Library.
Tentatively, Archer reached out to touch the spine of a book on one of the lower shelves. The leather felt warm and supple to the touch, almost as if it were alive.
Between the books, he could see a gold light at the other end of the room. Perhaps one of those electric lamps Sefia had told him about?
There was the creak of wood, followed by the soft swoosh of velvet on stone.
They weren’t alone here.
Erastis, Sefia mouthed, pointing.
Archer nodded. She’d told him the Master Librarian frequented the Library at night. He’d just hoped they’d be lucky.
Sefia tapped her brow, above her eye patch. I have an idea. She pointed at him, then at the marble floor. Stay here.
Cocking his head, he touched his temple, asking for her plan.
Sefia motioned with her arms. She was going to disappear, and when she returned, she’d have something to neutralize the Librarian.
Quickly, he mimed planting the bombs nestled in his pack.
Putting her finger to her lips, she nodded. As long as you do it quietly.
Archer reached for his pack as Sefia teleported away, leaving only a puff of air in her wake. He backed into the shadows, away from the golden light, and, pacing up and down the aisles, he found darkened corners to hide the explosives he and Keon had made: canisters of gunpowder and blackrock dust linked to firing mechanisms he’d stripped from revolvers. After planting each bomb, he very carefully pulled back the hammers, listening to them click into place.
One good jolt and the hammers would hit the firing pins, detonating the explosives and sending the whole vaulted annex up in flames.
He hoped.
There were only two bombs left in his pack when a voice made him halt in the shadows: “Who’s there?”
Stashing his pack among the shelves, Archer ducked as the lantern light flared. Crouching, he peeked through a set of blue-bound books. Erastis was only twenty feet away, squinting into the shadows.
He was old, with skin as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. His hand shook as he held the lantern, making the light flicker and jump over his long velvet robes.
“Is that you, Tolem?” the Master Librarian called. “Your Master won’t appreciate you snooping around here.”
Tolem? The Apprentice Administrator that had attacked them at the messengers’ post in Jahara. Archer remembered round spectacles and an unruly crop of dark curls.
Erastis shuffled forward, forcing Archer to retreat around a shelf, toward a set of carpeted steps.
He couldn’t see the Librarian anymore, but he could hear him stalking slowly along the aisles. “Or perhaps you’re not Tolem at all,” Erastis said. “Perhaps you’re someone with more malicious intent.”
Silently, Archer backed up to the stairs. Even here, the walls were lined with books. Enough books for Sefia to read for the rest of her life and never run out of new passages to discover.
He felt a twinge of regret.
Through the stone banister that edged the steps, Archer could see the light of Erastis’s lantern bobbing through the Library. He just had to evade him long enough for Sefia to return.
But as Archer reached the upper landing, the Master Librarian appeared at the bottom of the steps. Archer tried to duck out of sight, but before he could move, an invisible force gripped him tight and flung him sideways over the stone railing.
He felt the air rushing past him.
He felt his body strike the marble floor.
Wincing, he pulled himself into a crouch.
But then he froze. He couldn’t move. Erastis had caught him again.
Archer struggled as the Master Librarian approached, unhurried, with a wary look in his eyes. “Who are you?” His gaze flicked to Archer’s throat. “Not one of ours?”
When Archer said nothing, Erastis tilted his head curiously. “Archer?” There was a pause. “Sefia . . . is she here too?”
Still, Archer refused to speak.
The Master Librarian padded forward until Archer could see every cloud in his rheumy eyes. “Where is she?” When Archer didn’t reply, Erastis sighed. “Never mind.”
Wearily, the old man sat down in a wooden chair, which creaked under his weight as he set the lantern on the floor beside him. “I’d hoped to never meet you,” he said finally.
After everything Sefia had told him about the Librarian, Archer should have guessed that Erastis would say something unexpected, but still, the words caught him off guard. “Why?” he asked.
“Because I knew if I met you, we’d end up here, as adversaries.” The Master Librarian sighed. “And I’d hoped you’d run instead of fight.”
“We tried to run. It didn’t work.”
“You could have disappeared at any time in the last four months. Sefia could have teleported you back to Deliene or any of the hideaways from her days with the Locksmith. The two of you would have been alone, but you would have been free of your destiny. Instead, you’re here. The Red War is coming to an end. And so is your time in this world. But I suppose that’s how destiny works.”
Archer swallowed. “I don’t have an army. I can’t win any wars. And if I don’t do that, I can’t be the boy from the legends.”
“You’ll find a way, I’m sure.”
“Out of it?”
“Into it.” Erastis smiled sadly. “What are you doing here, Archer? There must be a better place for you to be right now, so close to the end.”
Archer was about to say that it wasn’t the end. But then he realized it didn’t matter. End, middle, beginning. Wherever he was in his own story, all that mattered was that he was with Sefia.
Reaching for a tasseled rope on the other side of the room, Erastis used his magic to give it a pull. Nothing happened. Was it attached to a bell somewhere in the depths of the mountain? Whom had he summoned? “Now tell me,” the Librarian continued. “What were you planning?”