Paper and Fire (The Great Library, #2) - Rachel Caine Page 0,21

like a reed in the wind before Jess braced him. “I said fall in, not fall over. Move it. I want all my ducklings together.”

Lambs; now ducklings. Botha must have been a farmer in a previous life. Jess thought about mentioning it, but he didn’t think the man was in a particularly joking mood. As they moved back toward the storefront, there was a storm of movement at the far end of the street, and all of them, with their weapons out, drew instinctively to the cover of doorways.

It wasn’t necessary, because the movement turned out to be Captain Niccolo Santi, leading a half century of his troops down the street, all at high alert.

The centurion stepped out to flag Santi. “All clear here, sir,” Botha shouted. “Coming out!”

He gestured to the rest of them, and Jess fell in as they jogged their way to the main force. Glain stepped out of the wrecked window with an arm around Helva to prop her up, while Wolfe took the other side.

Niccolo Santi held up a closed fist to halt the advance of the troops, and the look he gave Wolfe was long and unreadable. “Scholar,” he said. “Any damage?”

“Not to me,” Wolfe said. “This one needs Medica. Cobra bite. We’ve given her antivenin.”

Santi gestured, and two of his command stepped out of formation and rushed to take Helva. Some of the pressure in Jess’s chest lifted. She’ll be all right.

Jess expected a barrage of questions from Santi, at the very least, or an outpouring of concern for Wolfe’s safety.

So it came as something of a shock when Niccolo Santi, longtime partner and lover to Scholar Christopher Wolfe, turned to Botha and said, “Put Scholar Wolfe in restraints. He’s under arrest.”

The strangest thing of all was that Wolfe didn’t seem at all surprised.

EPHEMERA

From the personal journal of Scholar Christopher Wolfe (interdicted to Black Archives)

There are mornings when I wake and I am back in the cell, and I see nothing but the dark. Feel nothing but the pain. On those mornings, I am convinced I never escaped that place, and the life I have had since never existed at all, except as a fantastic illusion.

I should leave you, Nic. I know that, because I’m not really here at all. I should vanish and never come back, because one day either I will break and fail you or I will make you break your own vows to the Library to save me from myself.

But I can’t. Leaving you would destroy everything in me that remains true and good. Leaving you means giving up on a better world.

I’m sorry, Nic. I love you more than you can ever understand. I wish I could be strong enough to protect you from my own stupidity.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jess got no answers all the way back to the barracks, where he was put in a waiting room with the rest of the squad. They were all exhausted and confused, drenched with rank sweat, and though they were allowed to strip away their armor and were given food and water, the bare room offered no other comforts but wooden chairs. They had a watchful guard who, when Jess posed a question to Glain, snapped, “Quiet. No talking.”

He leaned back against the cool wall and closed his eyes. At least they couldn’t keep him from resting.

His Codex gave a small, strange tingle, like a tiny shock; it was a sign someone had written him a personal message, and it pulled him out of a slow slide toward dreams. He straightened and fumbled for the book in its case at his side. Every time he opened it, he remembered his parents gifting it to him before he’d left to train at the Library—a rich gift, leather bound, with his name inscribed in gold Egyptian hieroglyphs on the front. It had suffered some from hard use, and the scratched, roughened, battered surface looked nothing like the crisp new thing he’d brought just a year ago to Alexandria.

Felt like his, though. A part of him now.

The first section of the Codex held the standard Library listing of volumes available for reading and research—constantly updated by means of a science that was the secretive work of Obscurists, but that wouldn’t have triggered the shock—and, behind that, the contents of the latest reading he’d requested, which happened to be a history of the ancient Romans in the time of Julius Caesar. For all his faults, the man had put aside his quarrels with Cleopatra and Antony