CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Mate,” Thomas said, and moved his knight into position. Jess groaned and tipped his king. It was his third straight game lost, but he at least felt somewhat steadier and a good deal more levelheaded.

“Let’s not use that term anymore,” Jess said. “Just say, I win.”

Thomas raised his eyebrows and smiled a little—the best that Jess had seen from his friend since finding him in that cell. “All right. You know, as much as I enjoy this strange new feeling of winning against you, you should go back and talk to Morgan.”

“Not yet,” Jess said. “She’d only throw another pillow at me. Or something more damaging.”

“I understand why she’s angry. What are you angry about?”

What was it, exactly? He didn’t know, except that he was angry at everything suddenly. Angry for Morgan, but angry at her, too. Stupidly. It didn’t even make sense. “She thinks I’m taking advantage.”

Thomas’s eyebrows rose to a ridiculous level, wrinkling his forehead like an old man’s. “Are you, Jess?”

“How can you even ask me?”

“Your motives are completely pure, then?”

Jess glared at him. “Set the board, Thomas.”

“You sound like Dario just now, you know.”

“Are you trying to insult me?”

“Only a little.” He outright grinned this time, and Jess smiled back. With months of grime washed down the drain and his hair drying to puffball brightness, Thomas looked almost like his old self. He had some spark back in his eyes. But the grin faded too quickly. “She’s trapped here. I know how that feels. Now you begin to see it, too, how being helpless twists us around.”

“It didn’t twist you,” Jess said. “You’ve done very well.”

Thomas’s expression didn’t alter. “It seems so, maybe. But I’m not the same. She’s not. Her confinement isn’t like mine, but don’t let the soft bars fool you. Taking someone’s will, someone’s freedom . . . it kills the heart and then the soul.”

“It didn’t kill yours.”

Thomas said nothing this time. He set up the board, white and black, and waited for Jess to make a move.

Jess didn’t have a chance, because a knock came at the door. He was hoping for Morgan, but when Thomas swung it open, Khalila stood on the other side. She glanced quickly at them both and said, “We have to attend dinner now. I don’t think they gave us a choice.”

“See?” Thomas said to Jess. “So it begins. The little deaths of freedom.”

They stepped out into the hall. Khalila stood quite alone, and Jess wasn’t sure if her arms were simply crossed or if she was hugging herself for comfort. He knew what she was thinking and feeling, because he’d felt it himself when Morgan had been taken away. At least he’d known where she was and who’d taken her.

Dario was just . . . gone. Vanished. And there was no way to know if he was alive, free, imprisoned, dead. All Khalila could do was hope . . . and hope was difficult, knowing what they all knew about the Library now. He’s a smart one, Jess told himself again. Connections, money, friends . . . he’ll be all right. He wanted to say that to Khalila but knew how useless it would sound.

When she looked up and saw him, she forced a smile and said, “I was just thinking about my family.”

That stopped him. Why had he just assumed she’d be pining uselessly after Dario? Was it because he was so caught up in his own thoughts of Morgan? “Your family?” He knew he sounded surprised. “Why? Are they all right?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve betrayed everything they believe in. Worse than that, I’ve so many Scholars in the family. Will they be all right, Jess? Do you think the Library will punish them for what I’ve done?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

“I hope not.” The desolation in her voice hurt. He remembered her proud uncle, escorting her on the train to Alexandria, and the constant messages she’d received from her father and mother and siblings and cousins. Khalila’s life was full of love, and the decisions she’d made may have cut her off from that love. Would she have done that if he hadn’t come to her with his mad speculations and schemes?

Another knife cut of guilt slicing a piece of his heart away. He had no answers for her, nothing but a whispered, “I’m sorry,” which was no comfort. He wished she had been thinking of Dario. It would have been a simpler subject, an easier answer. This cut to the core of who Khalila was.

She made the choice, some part of him said, but he hated that he thought it. Of course she had. That didn’t make it all right. In some ways, it only made it worse.

While Jess stood helpless, Thomas walked directly to Khalila and wrapped her in a hug that lifted her off her feet. After a second of surprise, she put her arms around him—as far as they would stretch—and put her head on his broad shoulder.

“I would be dead if not for you,” he told her. “I would be dead to everything and everyone I knew if you hadn’t come for me. All of you. Don’t think I will ever forget what you’ve done for me.”

“I had to,” she said. “I was glad to.”

“Even so,” he said. “If you lose your family, I will be your family. Always.”

She took a deep breath and said, “Thank you. Now put me down, you lumbering bear.”

He laughed a little and put her back on her feet. “Sorry. It’s like picking up a tiny bird. You should eat more.”

“So should you,” she said. Her smile was back. So was the light in her eyes. It’s remarkable, Jess thought, that Thomas can do that. He had so much light inside him that it warmed those around him. “Will you be my escort to dinner?”

“I will,” Thomas said gravely, and offered her his arm, like an ancient country gentleman. She put her hand lightly on it.

Jess was laughing at them, but it stopped quickly as Morgan opened the door of his room and their eyes met. He nodded to her warily. She nodded back. Her eyes looked red and swollen, but there were no tears now. And no forgiveness, either.

He was still considering what to say to her when the door to Wolfe and Santi’s room opened and the two men stepped out. Wolfe gave them all a dour glance and said, “What are you waiting for?” as he pushed past and opened the door at the end of the hallway. Santi followed, and then Khalila and Thomas.

Jess cleared his throat and gestured, and Morgan preceded him out.

It didn’t really feel like peace.

Somehow Jess had expected a small, private room that would have been set aside for them, but instead the dining room of the Iron Tower was a large, open space filled with many, many tables and groups gathered at nearly every one. Most of those in the room fell silent and turned toward them as they entered, and Jess had an instinctive defensive reaction until Morgan murmured, “They never see new faces here. You’re novelties.”

Novelties. He felt Thomas flinch, saw Morgan avert her eyes, and it made him even angrier. We’re not your entertainment, Jess wanted to shout. He began to have a small inkling of what Morgan’s life might be like here, being the rebellious outcast in what seemed to be a group of true believers.

Morgan, gaze down, wasn’t looking at any of the other tables, but they were all staring . . . and whispering and pointing. A young girl rose from a nearby table and walked toward them. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen and had an unpleasantly smug look on her face, but what drew Jess’s attention was the rounded swell of her stomach beneath her dress. It took him a long moment to comprehend what that meant, and then he shot a fast, unguarded look at Morgan. Her face—what he could see from this angle—had set into a bland mask.

“Sister Morgan!” the girl almost purred, and extended both hands as if she expected Morgan to grasp them in welcome. “We’re so glad you decided to rejoin us. We missed you!”

She managed to make it look like her own idea to clasp her hands in excitement and pull them back when Morgan didn’t take the hint. Her smile turned brittle and a little vile. The silence stretched . . . and then Morgan said, “Rosa, we’re tired and hungry. Please excuse us.”

It was bare courtesy, and Rosa couldn’t have missed it, but she somehow managed to hang on to that smile and put both hands now on the curve of her stomach. “The baby’s started to kick. Do you want to feel it?”

“I’m afraid we are all far too tired this evening,” Khalila said, which sounded brusque but, in the way that only Khalila could manage, also sounded warm and kind. “Rosa, is it?”

“Yes,” Rosa said, and turned to her. She took in Khalila in one sweeping glance, head to toe. “You’re not one of us.”

“I am a Scholar,” Khalila said. “How does that make me alien to you?”

Rosa dismissed her and went back to Morgan. “Don’t worry,” she said, and pitched her voice a little louder to carry. “I know you missed your time, but Dominic is a patient young man. I’m sure you look forward to it.”

Dominic. Jess felt something dark settle into the pit of his stomach, because now he had a name for the Obscurist Morgan was expected to bed. Dominic. He scanned the room, wondering which of them it was. The puffy, pale one at the back with his attention fixed on his plate? The lean one watching them with silvery eyes? It would drive him mad, not knowing which one of them to hate.

Rosa started back toward her table but then turned around, as if she’d just thought of something. Pure, petty theater. “Oh,” she said to Morgan. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard about poor Sybilla?”

That, for the first time, broke through Morgan’s mask, and she quickly looked up. “What about her?”

“She had a . . . misadventure,” Rosa said. “Perhaps you should visit her on the hospital floor.”

This time, Gregory stood up from one of the tables not far away, and though he said nothing, Rosa quickly ducked her head and went back to her seat without another word. Gregory sank down, too, but Jess could feel his gaze on them.

On Morgan.

“Well,” Khalila said as they took chairs at one of the few empty tables. “I can see how the charm of this place might wear very thin. Morgan? All right?”

“Yes,” Morgan said, but in a toneless way that made Jess think the opposite. “Fine.” She swallowed and forced a little cheer. “The food’s very good. The servers will bring what you want.”

Thomas, settling uneasily into a chair too small for him, said, “Is there a list of choices?”

“No. You just tell them what you’d like. Wolfe was right; Obscurists are pampered. The best food, prepared just the way we want it; that’s just one of many ways they try to make us forget we’re—”

“Prisoners,” Jess finished.

“No,” Morgan said, and didn’t look at him. “Prisoners eventually get out.”

A servant wearing a gold band—didn’t that go against the entire structure of the Library?—came to ask politely what they wanted for food and drink. With no slate of choices, Jess was too tired to think creatively; longing a bit for home, though he didn’t know why, he just ordered roast beef and mash. Thomas must have felt the same, since he ordered schnitzel. Morgan asked for chicken; Khalila for roasted mutton. It was all very normal. As soon as the servant walked away, Thomas said, “The servants are pledged here for life as well?”

Morgan nodded. “The difference is that they do get to leave the Tower from time to time. Obscurists can only leave under the strictest rules and controls.”

“What about the ones who operate the Translation Chambers?”

“Our lowest caste,” she said. “They have the least talent for writing scripts; they can only interpret what’s already been written and infuse it with the quintessence to make it work.”

Jess thought it must be a strange blessing here to be a disappointment; it held the chance to take the outside air, see the world, at least a bit. “Lucky devils,” he said, and got a look of agreement from her. Just a brief one, but it made him feel less cold. He’d lost his anger, he realized, and partly because it was becoming clearer and clearer to him that none of this had to do with a choice Morgan had made. She’d not chosen to be born with this talent; in fact, she’d done everything in her power to avoid coming here in the first place. She’d never sought out being an Obscurist.

Or children, he thought before he could stop himself. Rosa, with her self-satisfied glow and pointed jibes, made it clear just how Morgan was being taunted.

“Morgan,” he said quietly. “Who’s Sybilla?”

She froze for an instant in the act of reaching for her water glass, then completed the motion, drank, and set it down before she said, “A friend.”

“And she’s ill?”

Morgan said nothing, but Wolfe did. He looked angry. “Not ill. Leave it, Brightwell.”

Another awkward silence, one Thomas moved to fill with a patently false cheer.

“Do you know the Tower already?” Thomas asked Wolfe. “You lived here. Such wondrous inventions they have here, I’d love to hear about all—”

“My mother determined I was without significant talent as an Obscurist when I was five years old,” Wolfe broke in. “At ten, I was removed to the Library orphanage, where I received my training. I’ve never been back. So I know little about the inventions, Thomas.”

“A lot of time between visits from your mother,” Santi said. He was watching Wolfe closely, a cup of poured wine forgotten in his hand.

“Not long enough. I saw her the day they released me from the Basilica Julia prison,” Wolfe said. “She brought me home. To you. She left before you found me.”

Silence at the table. Santi opened his mouth and closed it again, as if he couldn’t decide what to ask or what to say; he finally just drank his wine. Wolfe followed suit.

The mood had fallen a little dark, and grew darker with the sudden approach of Gregory, who smiled at them as if they were old friends. “Obscurist Hault,” he said. “Your presence is requested. Dominic has missed you during your absences. Please come with me.”

Dominic, Jess realized, must be the red-haired young man who stood a few paces back. He was small, compact, and covered in a spray of freckles . . . and miserable. Jess had been prepared to hate him, but seeing how he avoided even so much as looking in Morgan’s direction, he understood with blinding speed it wasn’t the boy’s choice, either.

Just a duty to be done.

Jess was rising to his feet to do something violent—to Gregory, if not to Dominic—when Wolfe quickly stood, faced Gregory, and said, “I’d have thought you’d have learned some manners at your age, but you’re as bad as you were when I was a child. You’ll have her the rest of her life. Isn’t that enough?”

Gregory straightened to face Scholar Wolfe, and Jess realized there was real dislike between these two. It bordered on hate. For all Gregory’s droll observations, he wasn’t remotely friendly. There was something dark underneath his smile—more like a smirk now. Unpleasant and superior. “Keria’s always favored you,” he said. “Her precious little boy, born a disappointment. She fought to keep you long past the age when you should have been sent away, and when you finally were, she still never forgot you. All her love was reserved for you, and you can’t even give her a kind word in return.”

“She doesn’t look to me for kind words. She has you for that. You were ever the politician. And the predator.”

Gregory’s smile froze in place, and shattered into a compressed, hard line. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing,” Wolfe said. “Except that you take a special, unseemly delight in your job.”

“And what do you think I do?”

“Play God with the lives of children.”

“Obscurist Hault is not a child. She is a young woman of tremendous potential who might one day prove as important as, if not more important than, your own mother. It’s in the best interests of the Iron Tower to—”

“To match her with an appropriate sire for her children? Oh yes. I know the game. I grew up with a mother who loathed the very sight of my father, and he hated her in turn. Odd, isn’t it, that your forced inbreeding has created generations of progressively less powerful Obscurists? It’s as if it doesn’t actually work to force people into loveless unions!”

“You know nothing—”

“As one of your more notable failures, I’d say I know everything,” Wolfe said flatly. “Go away, Gregory. Morgan stays with us.”

Jess stood up. Didn’t say or do anything; just stood up. Khalila stood, too. Thomas. Santi. Wolfe stood still with deliberate calm.

Dominic at last raised his head, and the relief on his face was very plain.

“This is a foolish waste of our charity,” Gregory said. “We’ve offered you safety. Refuge. Care for your wounded. And you’re throwing it back in our faces, and for what? You can’t keep her. She belongs to us. To the Tower and the Library.”

“She belongs to no one. Let me be clear: the girl makes her own choices, for as long as she’s with us. If my mother disagrees with that, tell her to come herself. I don’t listen to self-important lackeys.”

Gregory’s face turned an alarming shade of red. “As you wish,” he said. “Scholar Wolfe.”

He walked back to his table, anger in every stiff motion, and pointedly turned his back to them. Jess didn’t want to do the same. He didn’t trust Gregory not to stick a knife in it.

Dominic was still there. The young man looked scared as a rabbit, but he stayed long enough to say, to Morgan, “I’m sorry,” before he went back to his own table.

Not everyone in the Iron Tower was as content and smug as Rosa.

“Morgan?” Khalila settled back down in her chair and reached for Morgan’s hand. “They haven’t forced you—”

“Not yet,” Morgan said. “Thank you, Scholar Wolfe.”

He shook his napkin out and dropped it in his lap. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I did it to annoy Gregory.”

“Watch him,” Morgan said. “He’s a snake.”

“I’m immune to his particular poison. We knew each other as children, and he was five years older. You can imagine how that appealed to his cruelty.”

She shuddered. “I’d rather not. And thank you, whatever you meant by it.”

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. And then the food arrived, and Jess was pleasantly surprised to find his roast beef and mash were as good as a Sunday feast at home—one of the few consistently pleasant things he could recall about his childhood. They’d even mushed his peas. For a while, the five of them concentrated on their food. Someone had wisely allotted Thomas a double portion, and he ate it at an alarming speed that worried Jess for a moment; maybe the young German’s stomach couldn’t handle such a sudden rush of rich food. But Thomas seemed happy, and at the moment that was all that mattered.

“Glain!” Thomas suddenly put down his fork—he was more than halfway done with his second large schnitzel—and looked around at the rest of them. “What is Glain eating? Is she allowed visitors yet?”

“You’re free to ask,” Wolfe said. “The Medica floor is below this one.”

“Soup,” Thomas said. “I’ll take her soup.” Without waiting for anyone else, he stood up and stopped a server, ordered a bowl to go, and quickly left with it. Santi, done with his meal, leaned back to watch him go.

“He’s making a quick recovery,” he said.

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed. He didn’t look happy. “Seems so.”

They exchanged looks—significant ones, Jess thought. “He’s strong,” he said, out of some impulse to defend his friend. Santi sighed.

“He wouldn’t have survived without that,” he said. “But strength won’t keep the darkness away, and being on his own in a hostile place isn’t good for him. Go. Find him.”

Jess didn’t hesitate to take that suggestion. And it led him to the Medica floor.

The floor, instead of having individual chambers, had been built open, with only suspended curtains sectioning off one patient from another. Most of the curtains had been tidily drawn back and secured, the beds empty. The Medica attendant on duty rose from her station to study him as he entered, then nodded toward one of the curtained areas. “Your companions are there,” she said. “You can stay a few minutes. No longer. The patient needs rest.”

Jess nodded and continued on, and found Thomas sitting at Glain’s bedside. He seemed fine, and so did Glain; she’d been propped up with cushions, and was trying to spoon up soup, but without much appetite that Jess could see. He pulled a chair closer and straddled it. “I’ve been told that the Iron Tower gets the best of everything,” he said.

Glain swallowed her mouthful and reached for the water glass. “Soup is soup. But they’ve treated me well enough.” She shot Jess a guarded look. “How is everyone else?”

“All right so far,” he said. He knew she was asking mostly about Morgan, and he didn’t want to answer that question. “So, you’re not going to die on us, then.”

“Don’t you just wish? No. You’re not so lucky, Brightwell.”

“Good.” He extended a hand and she clasped it, but quickly, and then dug back into her soup. Personal emotion always made her uncomfortable. “Thomas thought of the food.”

“It was kind,” Glain said, and gave the German boy a brief, full smile. “Did you eat?”

“Schnitzel,” Thomas said. “But I almost regret it. I— My stomach can’t take so much rich food so quickly, I think.” He’d paled again and his fingers drummed in agitation. Trying, Jess figured, to distract himself from thoughts of what he’d eaten in the cells, or the times he’d had to endure hunger. Even the good things are tainted for him, Jess thought, and it enraged him all over again. But it would get better, wouldn’t it? Given time? It hasn’t for Wolfe. Against his will, he recalled Elsinore Quest’s advice: damage like this couldn’t be buried safely.

“We should leave you,” Jess said, “unless you need something?”

“I’ll harass the staff if I do. That’s what they’re here for,” Glain replied. “You concentrate on finding a way out of this. I’ll join you tomorrow.”

“If the physicians say you can.”

“Tomorrow,” she said, and ate another mouthful of soup with grim determination.

Thomas seemed reluctant to leave despite his restlessness, and Jess had to convince him that they weren’t abandoning Glain; he seemed eager for her not to feel alone, but to Jess it appeared to be more about Thomas’s experiences shadowing the situation. Eventually, Glain persuaded him by rolling her eyes and said, “Oh, for the sake of Heron, just leave me to get some rest, Thomas! I’m fine!” And as blunt as it was, it did the job of convincing him to follow Jess out.

As they left, though, Jess caught sight of a familiar figure slipping into another private curtained-off area across the way, and put his hand on Thomas’s arm to hold him back. “Wait here for me,” he said. “I’ll just be a moment.”

“Jess?”

“One moment.”

He didn’t go into the private space, but he pulled the curtain aside, just enough to see Morgan sitting down at the bedside of another young woman. It took him a moment to recall it, but hadn’t the snide girl Rosa mentioned something about Morgan’s friend? Sybil . . . No. Sybilla.

Sybilla couldn’t have been much older than Rosa—fifteen or sixteen, best guess. She was a slip of a thing, swallowed up by blankets and pillows, wan, pale, and unconscious.

As he watched, Morgan put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, bowed her head, and began to cry. Silent, wrenching tears.

“Sir,” the Medica attendant said sharply from behind him. “Come away. Now.”

Jess jumped and turned and followed her away. “Wait,” he said. “What happened to her? The girl in the bed?”

“I can’t discuss that.”

“Wait.” Jess drew her to a stop and met her eyes. “What happened?”

She looked away all too quickly. “I told you, I can’t discuss it.” But she hadn’t pulled away, either, and after a pause whispered, “She took poison. She’s not the first.”

He kept his voice as low as hers. “Why?”

“Not everyone is happy with their fate,” she said, and then did pull away. “Or suited to it. You should go. Now.”

Jess looked back over his shoulder at the closed curtains. Morgan must not have heard; he could see her shadow against the cloth, still bent forward. Still lost in her grief and fear.

I won’t let it happen to you, he told her. Whatever you feel about me now, that doesn’t matter. I don’t ever want to see you like Sybilla.

He walked Thomas back to the safety of the others and waited on the stairs until Morgan walked out onto the landing in front of the Medica doors. She didn’t look up to where he stood; she seemed tired and lonely, and she turned and took the stairs down. Away from him. Away from the rest of them.

Jess followed quietly and at a distance.

She descended two floors and went down a hallway, and as he stepped through and into sudden, thick darkness, he felt a knife prick the skin of his throat, and he immediately froze.

Then she sighed. “Oh, Jess. Please go away.” Her voice sounded thick and unsteady, and he knew she was still crying or on the verge of it. The knife moved away, and he heard her start to turn.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. That earned another sigh, even more quiet.

“For what?”

“For not understanding. Staying away from this place should always have been your choice. Not mine.” He hesitated for a second. “Your friend. Will she live?”

“Yes,” Morgan said. “And that’s almost worse. You see, they now consider her a danger to herself, so what little freedom she did have left will be taken away. She can’t bear that. Yet she’ll have to somehow.”

“Is he so bad? Her match?”

“No. Iskander is perfectly fine. But Sybilla . . . she was in love with someone else.”

“Who?”

Morgan turned and put her hand on his cheek. The contact was sweet and warm and unexpected, and he resisted the urge to put his arms around her.

And then she said, “Me.”

He couldn’t comprehend that for a moment, and then his stomach lurched and dropped two floors. “You— You and Sybilla?”

“No, Jess, that’s not what I mean at all.” Morgan’s hand dropped away and he felt terribly, icily cold now. He felt her move away. The hallway was starting to reveal itself to him in shadows and highlights of dark gray, and he could see her now, just a shape. A cipher. “She was kind to me. She was the only one, at first, and we spent time together. She liked me. I didn’t realize—I didn’t realize at first that she felt more for me than that.” The pain of that was still there in her voice, and he almost winced. “And when I did, I didn’t know what to say, except that I—I couldn’t be with her. I felt awful about it; I think she saw me as . . . as a refuge from Iskander. But it was never . . . I never . . .” This time there was no doubt she was crying; he could hear the agonized hitch of her breath. “Oh God, Jess. I didn’t tell her I was running. I left her here alone. You betrayed me, and I betrayed her. I should have at least tried to help her get out of here, too. I knew she was just as desperate!”

He still felt light-headed; his heart was pounding so hard it hurt. “It wasn’t your fault. You felt you had to help us with Thomas. You know that.”

“It was more than that. I was running away from Dominic, too, that night,” she said. “We both try to do the right thing, don’t we? But no matter what we do, it keeps coming out wrong.”

He put his arms around her, and after a second of stiffness, she collapsed against him. He kissed her cheek, and she put her arms around his neck and held him tightly. “I love you,” she whispered to him. “I never stopped, Jess—I want you to know that. I just—I just felt so alone here, and the only person I could blame was you.”

She loves me. She still loves me. That brought him a stunned kind of peace. “Forgive me?”

She kissed him gently on the lips. Sweet and a little sad. “I did already,” she said. “Now go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He was unexpectedly tired, he realized as he headed back to his room, but there was no chance to rest yet. Wolfe’s door was open, and Khalila, Thomas, and Santi were in with him. They all looked up when he passed, and Wolfe said, “Brightwell. In.”

Jess took up a leaning spot on the wall. Wolfe paced, of course, as was his usual habit. Khalila and Thomas sat, quietly watching him. Santi poured Jess a cup of wine, and Jess took a sip before he asked, “So, what’s this?”

“This is us planning what to do,” Santi said. “It’s not going very well. Considering that no matter what we do, there’s very little chance we can break free of this tower, and none at all we will get out of Alexandria alive if we do.”

“Nic.”

“There’s no point in planning when we’re too tired to think,” he said quite reasonably. “Your mother’s not likely to hand us over immediately, is she? Or have us knifed in our beds?”

“No,” Wolfe said. He kept pacing, hands restlessly tugging at his robe. “Hardly her style.”

“In that case, I have some news,” Santi said. “Zara might not be a friend to me any longer, but I do have some in the High Garda I can rely on. I asked them to let me know if anyone matching Dario’s description was captured either in Rome or elsewhere. There have been no arrests. He made it out of Rome safely, I believe.”

Khalila let out a trembling breath and whispered a prayer of thanks.

“Glain’s doing well,” Jess said. “She should be strong enough to join us tomorrow.”

“Or will join us, anyway?” Wolfe asked. “Yes, I know the girl. She won’t stay in that bed long.”

“And Morgan?” Thomas looked at Jess and raised his eyebrows. “She’s all right?”

“Yes. She’s all right. I saw her to her room.”

“Morgan’s in no danger at all here, at least not the kind we’re in,” Wolfe said. “Her problem is more desperate, but less violent. We have a day, two at most, before the Archivist himself arrives at the Tower, and once he does, my mother won’t have a choice but to hand us over. She can turn the Artifex away. Not the head of the Great Library.”

“Then we need to leave,” Thomas said. “Perhaps the Obscurist will send us away to safety?”

“She says she will,” Wolfe said. “I don’t know if I believe her. My mother’s ever been in pursuit of her own agenda. Sentiment doesn’t often enter the equation.”

Like mother, like son, Jess thought, but had the sense not to say it. “Any other way out of here?” he asked, but he already knew the answer. If there had been, Morgan wouldn’t have been here as long as she had.

“It’s possible,” Khalila said slowly. “I’ve been researching the Iron Tower for months. I was doing it for Morgan, in case I could find any way to get her out safely. Just before we left, I found something strange in the records. Very strange. I took notes, but I didn’t have a chance to verify the research.”

“And?” Wolfe asked, and she blushed a little.

“Just a moment.” She turned, and Jess thought she was retrieving something from a hidden pocket in her dress. Or under it. She handed over a single sheet of paper to Wolfe. “It’s coded. Dario created the cipher for me. Do you need the key?”

Jess gestured for the page, and Wolfe passed it along. Jess blinked. “When did he make the code for you?”

“When? Just a few days ago. He said we’d be better off that way. Why?”

Jess felt himself smiling tightly; how like Dario to do something smart and at the same time demonstrate his arrogance. “Because I recognize it. It’s my family’s code.”

“Don’t tell me Dario’s a long-lost cousin!”

“Just an ass,” Jess said. “He asked me about the code once. I told him it was unbreakable. So of course he broke it. And now he’s using it. Idiot.”

“The contents?” Wolfe prompted impatiently. Santi, who’d said nothing, pushed himself off the wall he’d been holding up to stand next to them.

“There’s a hidden section in the Iron Tower. Several floors unaccounted for in all of the records that exist. What’s above the garden level, where the Translation comes in?”

Wolfe frowned. “Nothing. That’s the top of the Tower.”

“No, that isn’t true,” Thomas said. His eyes turned blank, the way they did as he performed calculations Jess couldn’t even fathom inside his head. “There must be at least four more floors above it. Possibly five.”

“Morgan would have found it by now. She’s had nothing but time to look!”

Jess sent Wolfe a warning look. “If Thomas says it’s there, it’s there. Perhaps we could hide in these hidden floors. Perhaps there’s even an escape of some kind there.”

“Don’t you think if there was a way upstairs, someone else would have found it by now?”

Wolfe hadn’t said anything, but he looked over their heads at Santi, who raised his eyebrows.

“We can try,” he said. “But I have a feeling that anything that’s secret inside the Iron Tower may be a great deal deadlier than it looks.”

Jess slept poorly, even as tired as he was. All the day’s events kept jumping through his mind, and the knowledge that Morgan was here, within reach, left him feeling restless. When he rose at the first light of dawn the next day, his first thought as he looked out the narrow, unbreakable window was, This is the last time I’ll see Alexandria. One way or another, they’d either leave this place for good or die here.

Not surprising to him that Wolfe and Santi were already up and dressed. Wolfe still wore a Scholar’s robe over his plain shirt and trousers. Santi had put on his uniform. Khalila emerged just a few minutes after, fresh and lovely in a dark blue dress and head scarf.

She smiled at Jess. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “You?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t seen Thomas yet. Maybe he’s the late riser among us.”

But he wasn’t. Glain was true to her word and appeared just a moment later, with Thomas walking at her side as she climbed the stairs. They were talking with an ease and animation that seemed vaguely surprising to Jess, given their circumstances.

And then Morgan. She’d changed into a practical costume: trousers and a gray jacket. Against the plain fabric, her gold collar seemed far too bright. She’d pulled her brown hair back in a twist. All business.

“The Artifex came to the gates just before dawn,” she said. “I saw him arrive with soldiers. The Obscurist ordered him to leave. Very tense. I’m surprised there wasn’t a fight.”

“There will be,” Santi said. “Soon. He’s not going to take no for an answer.”

“He won’t have to,” Wolfe said. “He’ll send for the Archivist, and that’s an end to it. And us.” He nodded to Khalila. “We’ll need to explore Khalila’s information. Quickly.”

“About that,” Santi said. “Wathen. How do you judge your ability to run today?”

Quick on the uptake, Glain. Her dark eyes flashed around at each of them, and she raised her chin and said, “Whatever the day requires, sir.”

Santi nodded. “Packs and weapons. Our time’s running out. Either we find a way out this morning or we fight.”

And our odds aren’t good, either way, Jess thought. He reached out for Morgan’s hand and her fingertips felt chilled in his. She knew, too. She had to know. This idea of Khalila’s might be a useless effort, but it was all they had left.

“Where are you going?” Morgan asked, and Jess explained it as quickly as he could. She caught on immediately. “Of course. There was something that always bothered me. The Obscurist would lock the garden entrance every few days. I thought she was conducting secret work via Translation. I didn’t think it could be anything else.”

“You’ve never heard of any hidden floors above it?”

“No,” she said. “Never. Not even a rumor.”

“Maybe they don’t actually exist,” Thomas said.

“Then we’ll have a nice garden stroll before we’re taken out to be killed,” Santi said. “I don’t see any drawbacks.”

They took the strange moving room—it was, Jess learned, called a lift, which made quite a bit of sense, given its function—up to the garden floor, a floor that, he realized, could only be accessed by Morgan’s hand resting on the panel, while other choices were clearly visible with switches. “Not everyone is allowed use of the garden,” she told them. “Only the most senior in the Tower.”

“And you’re one of them?” Wolfe gave her a look that said he clearly doubted that, and, of course, he was right.

“No,” she said. “I changed the script inside the elevator months ago. It thinks I’m Gregory. So far, none of them have figured that out, though they’ve found other changes I made. I suppose this is the last time I’ll be able to use this one, too.”

“With any luck, it’s the last time you’ll need to,” Jess said. “Can you use the Translation Chamber?”

But Morgan shook her head this time. “Not after I used it to escape last time. They’ll have made sure to lock it off from me this time. But I’ll check, just to be sure.”

When the lift slid to a stop and the doors opened, they stepped out into the lush, warm garden. It was deserted except for the flutters of butterflies among the flowers and a subtle hum of bees that drowsily roamed the room near a hive at the far end. The Translation couch and helmet occupied the central gazebo of the room, but outside morning stretched toward noon beneath a bleached-pale sky, and the dizzy patchwork of Alexandria heaved with motion in the streets.

Eerily quiet here.

“They might already know we’ve come here,” Wolfe said. “Morgan, see if you can use the Translation equipment.”

It was immediately obvious she couldn’t; as she came close to the helmet and couch, a low humming sound rose and spiked, and a harsh blue spark stabbed out toward her. She yelped and jumped back, rubbing at the spot on her arm where it had struck. It left a burn.

“And that’s our answer,” Santi said. “Work quickly. Spread out. Find anything that might be a concealed staircase, a switch.”

They’d all been well trained in how to suss out hidden alcoves, floor tiles, concealed safes and shelves. Common practice among those who possessed book contraband to hide it from view. Scholars and soldiers learned how to pry those secrets out early in their training.

But Jess had experience at hiding things, not just finding them. The Brightwell family expertise lent itself to a search like this, and instead of doing what the others were, he stood very still, looking around the large round room. Those who built this place weren’t trying to hide something completely. They’d want it accessible. No Obscurist is going to want to grub around in flower beds, looking for a switch or a panel.

He let his eyes unfocus and wander, and suddenly, he was looking at a statue. The largest statue, in fact, in the room: an image of hawk-headed Horus, from whose bowl flowed a continuous stream of water that snaked among the flowers and plants.

Horus, God of Scribes. Patron of the Great Library.

Jess grabbed Thomas as he passed and pulled him over to the statue. “Look for any kind of switch,” he said. They both began running hands over the cool marble, and then Jess felt a scarab ornament on the arm of the statue give to his touch. “Here! It’s here!”

He pressed it, and above them something hissed. What had seemed like just another part of the ceiling proved to be a plate—the bottom of a black iron staircase that screwed down from the ceiling, turning so smoothly that it must have been powered by steam or hydraulics. The whole thing was silent enough that it seemed as eerie as a dream.

“Incredible,” Thomas murmured, and ran his hand over the smooth black railing. “We go up?”

“We go up,” Santi said. “But I go first.”

Jess hung back to take rear guard. The staircase turned in a tight spiral around a central iron core, and above him Thomas said, reverently, “Look at this. It’s the same as the Iron Tower! No one remembers how this metal was created; it has the same properties as the Iron Pillar of Delhi, but—”

“You must be feeling better,” Glain said from just below him. “Since you’re lecturing again.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be. I’m happy to hear it.”

At the top of the steps, Santi paused and said, “There’s a door. No lock and no handle, so I assume it takes an Obscurist. Morgan?”

She squeezed her way past the others to the top. Jess craned his neck, wishing he’d put himself farther ahead, so he could see what was going on. Someone has to bring up the rear, scrubber. He could almost hear Dario’s mocking voice. When had he started missing Dario, of all people?

It seemed to take forever, and Jess faced outward, toward the garden room. How long before someone—Gregory, perhaps—came looking for them? How long before he realized they’d gone missing and began to search? Not long, surely. He wasn’t the trusting sort. I should be up there, he thought. I’m the one who’s good with closed doors.

But Santi did know best, after all. Above there was a hollow clunk, and Santi said, “We’re moving!” Khalila, just ahead of Jess, glanced over her shoulder at him and gave him an encouraging smile.

“Come on,” she said. “At least we can brag to Dario later that we saw something he didn’t.”

Jess backed his way up the winding stairs, training his weapon on the room below until the last twist hid it all from view. Then he turned and hurried up after Khalila, across a shallow landing, and toward a black iron door that stood open.

Behind him he heard another hiss, and looked back to see the staircase moving again, this time spiraling back into the ceiling. Counterweights. It had been only their weight on the staircase that had kept it down after the initial descent. The design reminded him of Heron of Alexandria and all the marvelous bellows and gears that had driven the wonders of the temples in the early days of the Library.

Khalila had stopped in the doorway, and Jess stepped up beside her and stopped as well. He couldn’t help it.

A vast, circular Serapeum spread out in front of them, but not like any he’d ever seen before. The Library’s daughter facilities were always, always orderly, clean, well maintained.

This was like the ghostly wreck of one.

The Black Archives rose in a hollowed-out tower within the tower, ring after ring of shelves and cabinets crowding every available level, with an ancient, dusty flat lift on a track that must have been designed to spiral up from one level to another. The number of books, scrolls, tablets . . . it was staggering and chaotic. The smell of the place overwhelmed him—old paper, mold, neglect. A thick, choking patina of dust.

It made his father’s warehouse of contraband in London, the largest that Jess had ever heard of, look like a modest rural shelf. There had to be tens of thousands of volumes here—no, hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The books had long ago overflowed the shelves, and towering stacks of them leaned against corners and tottered atop the bookcases themselves. The shelves, Jess realized, were thickly stacked with multiple layers of volumes, too.

Without even meaning to, Jess took a step inside the hidden tower, then another, as he tilted his head to look up. The levels of shelves reached up and up, spiraling to what seemed like infinity. This isn’t the Archives, he thought. This is something else.

Wolfe’s voice was hushed as he said, “The Black Archives. I don’t know what’s worse—the number of things they’ve kept from us or the incredible hubris of the idea.”

The Black Archives. A story, a rumor, a fable. The place where the Library kept everything too dangerous to circulate, too damaging to allow out to the public.

How could so many books be dangerous? And by whose standards?

Khalila walked to a shelf, reached for a book. Morgan got there fast and grabbed her wrist before she could touch the leather spine. “Wait,” she said. “There could be traps or alarms. Before you touch anything, let me look first. That goes for everyone.” In truth, she looked shaken. So did Wolfe, for that matter. Even Santi kept turning in place, staring in shock and a mixture of wonder and horror.

Traps. The word finally penetrated Jess, and he swallowed. There could be traps on books. Jess tried to comprehend that and failed. The scale of the place continued to overwhelm him. So many books abandoned here. Criminal works walled up to die.

They waited while Morgan made the rounds of the shelves, looking, occasionally brushing her fingers across a shelf or a case. Finally, she said, “It’s safe. You can touch them now.”

Khalila took the book from the shelf. Her voice trembled as she read the title. “Generation of a Magnetic Field by Use of Electric Currents,” she said. “Hans Christian Ørsted, 1820.” She put it back and pulled another. “The Law of Reciprocity of the Magneto-Electric and Electromagnetic Phenomena and Applications for the Reversibility of Electric Generators. Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz, 1833.”

Wolfe moved around the shelves, not touching, just looking. He said, “This whole level has to do with applications of electrical fields. Heat, light, machines—all powered by electrical fields. These are things that I’ve only seen here within this tower. I thought it was an Obscurist’s trick, powered by alchemy. It isn’t. It’s something engineers discovered centuries back. And they kept it from us.”

“But why?” Thomas’s eyes had gone very wide. He went to Khalila’s side and pulled more books, searching the titles. “Why would they keep these amazing things from us? Can you even imagine how bright the world would be if we had these lights? What about using this electromagnetic phenomenon to power trains or carriages? Could it be better than steam? Why would they—”

“Because someone, when this work was first submitted to the Library, decided the very idea of it was dangerous. Uncontainable.” Wolfe’s voice sounded weary, and angry. “They looked into that future and decided it couldn’t be controlled, and, above all, the Library wants control. Look around you. Look at what the Library kept from us. We all knew it was true. Thomas and I, we both have experience of what they won’t allow to be known.”

“The press,” Thomas whispered.

“The what?” Khalila asked it absently, still fascinated by the titles of the books on the shelves, all the knowledge that they had never seen. Never imagined.

Wolfe was the one to answer. “He means a letterpress, ink blocks arranged in letters and pages. It allows books to be easily reproduced. The Library can’t allow that, because then all this—all this banned knowledge—could be distributed without having an arbiter of what is good or bad, dangerous or helpful.” He clutched the book he was holding in both hands, and the line of his jaw was so tight, Jess could see the bone beneath it.

“And the authors?” Khalila asked. “What would have happened to these authors?”

“Dead,” Wolfe said. “Silenced. Either when their work was placed here, or soon after. The Library would have seen to that. A candle can make a bonfire. So it’s snuffed out quickly.” The silence hung heavy with the smell of old paper and leather, dampness and neglect. “This is the graveyard where they buried our future.”

Khalila pulled in a breath and carefully, reverently replaced the book she’d removed. These were, Jess realized, not just forbidden works; they were the only remaining memories of brilliant people—Scholars, librarians, maybe even just amateur inventors—who’d discovered things the Library wanted to keep hidden. There would be no personal journals celebrating their lives in the Archives. No scholarly papers. No record of their births or deaths. They had been erased.

These books were all that remained of a vast collection of lost souls, and instead of being cared for, being loved, they were jumbled and rotting like a child’s abandoned toys. Jess felt it like a hot spear through his chest.

Then he got angry.

Thomas cleared his throat. “All this is only for the development of electricity,” he said. “What else is there?”

“There must be a Codex,” Wolfe said. “Even the forbidden needs to be cataloged.”

“Here,” Santi said. He moved to a vast book, thick as a builder’s block, with pages large enough to hold a thousand entries each. The book was chained to a podium with links of the same black iron as the staircase and the tower itself. It sat open to the center. Morgan moved her hand over it and nodded. Santi flipped pages to where in a normal Codex there would have been a summary of categories and coding. He stared, then slowly looked up at the stacked levels upon levels of books. “It’s—it’s as long as the Codex for the Archive. Inventions. Research. Art. Fiction. Printing—”

“Printing,” Wolfe repeated, and he and Thomas exchanged a sharp look. “Where?”

“The seventh circle,” Santi said. He seemed shaken. “It’s an entire section. I thought—”

None of them wanted to finish that sentence.

They all crowded on the flat lifting device, and a blank panel rose out of the iron plate. Morgan hesitated, then pressed her palm down to it. She gasped a little, and Jess moved toward her, but she flung out a hand to stop him. “No. No, it has to be me. This place, it only obeys Obscurists.” She closed her eyes and focused, and the lift lurched into movement on the track. It rose as it circled, level upon level, and Jess tried not to look down. So easy to fall from this thing, he thought. The thin railings bordering it were no kind of reassurance at all.

The lift slowed and stopped, and Morgan stepped off. She touched the old wood of the bookcase that circled around, and in a moment said, “It’s safe enough. But be careful.”

Thomas moved next to her, facing a bookcase seven shelves high and at least twenty paces wide. “All of this? Surely it can’t all be about what Thomas dreamed up, and Wolfe before him.” Morgan plucked the first book from the bottom corner. “Chinese. I don’t read it—”

“I do,” Wolfe said, and took it to open to the flyleaf. “The Printing of Ink to Paper Using Characters Carved in Wood by Ling Chao.”

“What year?” Thomas asked. Wolfe didn’t answer. “Sir? What year?”

“Translated from the Chinese calendar? Year eight hundred sixty-eight,” he whispered at last. “They’ve robbed us of this for more than a thousand years.” His voice shook, and he thrust the book back at Thomas to turn away and stare at the shelves that marched around the level. “How many? How many times was this created and cut down? They’ve been destroying it over and over, all this time. All this time.”

Santi had walked away, all the way toward the end of the shelves, and suddenly he stopped, backed up, and reached out to pluck a volume out of the rest. “Ah, Dio mio,” Santi murmured, and put his hand on the cover as if trying to hide the title. The name. He turned and looked back at them, and they went to him, as if he’d asked for help. Maybe he had, silently.

Thomas took the book gently and opened it. “On the Uses of Pressed Metal Type and Ink on Paper . . .”

“For the Safeguarding, Archiving, and Reproduction of Written Works,” Wolfe said. “It’s mine. I was told it was destroyed. All destroyed. Everything I ever wrote. But it wasn’t. They kept it.” Santi put his hand on Wolfe’s shoulder and held on, head bowed, but Wolfe didn’t seem to feel the offered comfort. “They kept our work and let it rot.”

“So you see,” a voice rose from far below them. “Every one of these is a life snuffed out. You see the burden I’ve carried, every day since taking my post. I’m the caretaker of a graveyard of ghosts.”

Jess, Glain, and Santi all reacted at the same time, and all with military precision—spreading out, bringing their slung weapons into line to point down. There was nothing obvious to shoot, just the Obscurist Magnus, fragile and alone, standing in the rounded area below, beside the open Codex.

She stared up at them, and from here, so far above, Jess couldn’t read her expression at all. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m alone. Careless of you to leave the door open, though. I would have thought you’d have closed it, at the very least.”

Jess’s fault. He’d been so distracted by what was in front of him that for that one moment, he’d forgotten what lay behind.

“Come here to gloat?” Wolfe’s voice was bleak and empty now, as if something inside him had burned down to the very ashes. “Well played, Mother.”

“Not gloat,” she said, and without anyone’s command, the iron lift glided back down to her level and she stepped on. It carried her all the way up to where they stood, and as she walked toward them, Jess saw the pallor of her face, the strain. “All my life I thought I knew the Library and what we were. What we stood for in the world . . . until I was passed the key to this room. For the past three hundred years, every Obscurist Magnus has been shown this place, and it breaks them. It broke me. The weight of all this waste . . . it’s too much.”

“And yet you did nothing,” her son said. “Nothing. Even when—”

“Yes, I did nothing! What can any one person do to stop this?” The Obscurist pulled in a breath and looked away. “When your book came here . . . I knew. I knew I couldn’t continue this way. I tried to save you, you know. I tried to protect you.”

“Protect him? Do you have any idea what was done to him?” Santi crossed the distance to her in three long strides, and Jess didn’t know what he would have done—hit her, flung her over the railing—but he didn’t have the chance, because Wolfe caught up and got between them. Santi checked his rush forward and stared into Wolfe’s eyes, and whatever he saw there, he turned away.

“I don’t blame you for your anger, any of you. This is a horror. It’s the worst sin of all the Library’s many evils. I did my best to minimize it.”

“You mean, your least,” Wolfe shot back. “Your best would have been to say no to all this. To stop it!”

“I couldn’t stop it. Not without risking the punishment of everyone I hold dear. But you can, my son. You all can.”

Jess couldn’t keep quiet any longer; his anger boiled over and he heard himself saying, “You’re the most powerful woman in the world, by all accounts. We’re just outcasts. Criminals. Traitors. They’re likely to kill us today. Why would you think we can change anything?”

“Because you’ve already started.” The Obscurist had always looked mysteriously young to Jess’s eyes, though clearly she was old enough to have a son Wolfe’s age. But just now she looked every year of her true age, if not older. “I spent most of my life believing that I could change things eventually; I would never have been able to continue as I did if I hadn’t. I gathered up the power I could, and I forced the Archivist to take some of what was stored here and let it out in the Archives, bit by bit. But I sacrificed”—her gaze fell on Wolfe and held—“too much. I told myself that things would change eventually, that I could make it happen. But I know the truth. The Library can’t be changed from within. We’re all too . . . too afraid. Or too cynical.”

“All you have to do is dump all of this into the Archive Codex!” Khalila said. “You have the power to do it!”

“No. I don’t.” The Obscurist touched her collar, the thick gold traced with alchemical symbols. “There are things even I can’t change, or I would have done it when I was young. When I was still brave.”

“So you want us to do it,” Glain said. It was the first thing she’d said, and she was absolutely white with rage. “You coward. You ask us to bring down a giant with a—a pebble!”

“The Jewish king David did,” Khalila said. “Or so the stories tell us. Goliath fell to a slingshot and a stone. And the Library is a lumbering giant, dying of its own arrogance; it has to change or fall. We have the tools. The will. The knowledge.” She nodded to the book Wolfe still held in his hands. “We’ll have your printing press.”

Of all people, Jess had never expected Khalila Seif to propose such a thing. It was such a radical betrayal of the Library that Jess’s head spun from the whole idea. “Well, we couldn’t do it here, in Alexandria,” he said. “Certainly not here in the Iron Tower. And we’re out of time. The Archivist is coming, isn’t he?”

“He is,” the Obscurist agreed. “My delays in handing you over have already been noted; that will lead to my demotion, most likely today. Gregory has been wriggling to make himself the new Obscurist, and he’ll get his wish, for all the joy it will bring him. No, it’s inevitable. It’s already done,” she said, as Wolfe started to speak. “But I can get you out of here. Sending you on your way is the last gift I can ever give you, Christopher.” Her voice dropped lower, to a pitch Jess hardly even heard. “Except my love.”

Wolfe said nothing. He stared at her as if she were a stranger, and maybe she was. Families so often are, Jess thought. The silence stretched, and then he said, “What you’re suggesting we do—it’s like cutting loose a wild tiger. All this unchained knowledge will cause chaos and destruction, and what will happen can’t be managed. I can’t guess what will come of it. Can you?”

“No,” his mother said, and looked around the room. “But it will be better than this sad place.”

“We’ll need a safe haven, somewhere to build these machines,” Morgan said. “Allies to hide us and help us distribute the books we print. Most of all, we’ll need these.” She gestured at the Black Archives, the forbidden knowledge. “With the right books, we can change everything.”

“Then take them,” the Obscurist said. “Take as much as you can carry. I’ll erase them from the records, and no one will ever know they disappeared. You’ll have to carry them with you, and you can never come back here. Not as long as the Library controls the Iron Tower.”

“Go where?” Jess asked, but then he answered his own question. “London.”

“Yes. Your family—blood and bonded by trade—is powerful and wealthy enough to hide you,” the Obscurist agreed. “You’ll need more than that, but it’s a start.”

“Did you plan this?”

“I’m not gifted with so much foresight. But when I saw you together the day I came to get Morgan, and saw how much you all cared for one another, I hoped you would be the ones to finally, finally have the skills and the courage to do this. I knew you wouldn’t let Thomas just vanish into the dark. You’d poke and dig, until you found him, and . . . this.”

Thomas’s eyes were bright now, and very strange as he stared at the older woman. Was it anger? Jess couldn’t tell, but it unnerved him. Badly. “You didn’t want them to have a choice, did you? Betray the Library or die. So you let them take me away. To motivate my friends.”

“I did what I needed to do,” Keria said. “I always have.”

Wolfe was still between Santi and his mother, but in that moment, he looked like he might go for her throat himself. “I thought I understood how cold you were,” he said. “But there’s no calculation for that. Mother.”

“Perhaps not,” Keria Morning said, and turned away. “Choose the books you want to take. You won’t get another chance.”