Paper and Fire (The Great Library, #2) - Rachel Caine Page 0,45
. . . think. It’s not just gears and steam in there. It’s something else.” He itched to open one up now that he’d read that coded volume, full of tantalizing hints about how the thing worked inside. Thomas would have had exactly the same impulse; the German boy was an expert at mechanical things, constantly breaking down and building up their inner workings. He’d been fascinated with automata. Still is fascinated, Jess corrected himself. He isn’t dead.
The group marched together at a brisk pace down clean stone hallways, inset with alcoves filled with warrior deities from around the world—African, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Celtic, Norse, Roman, Japanese, Russian. Finally, at the end of the hallway, in pride of place, outsized golden statues of Horus and Menhit, the local Egyptian war gods. The floor beneath their boots, shining and clean, was a mosaic design of sphinxes, and at the end, in the rounded vestibule of the High Commander’s office, the Great Library’s seal shone gold, inset in the marble. The place smelled of metal and oil, with a faint, acrid smell of chemicals and gunpowder floating above like fog. The smell of war. Jess still preferred the crisp, dry scent of paper and leather.
This is the end, he thought, and wondered if the others were thinking the same thing. This is the end of my time at the Library. We’ve been held hanging, and now the sword is about to fall and cut us loose.
My father will never take me back.
Glain stepped forward to knock on the huge ebony doors, but she didn’t need to do so; they swung open without a sound, and after a bare instant of hesitation, she squared her shoulders and led the way in.
It was a long march through a very large room. Displays of arms and armor and vast shelves of Blanks lined the walls. At the far end of the space, in front of a wall inscribed with rows of hieroglyphs that looked millennia old, sat a desk with crouched lions for legs.
An old man sat behind it.
He watched as the four of them snapped to attention, and as he stared at them, Jess revised his judgment. The High Commander wasn’t that old; his hair had gone a glossy gray, with black threading through, but it was like a layer of snow on concrete. His shoulders were still broad, his body straight, and he had large, scarred hands that had seen plenty of hard use. The High Commander was of African heritage, with skin so dark it held overtones of blue in the lamplight, and startling hazel eyes that looked as sharp and clever as Scholar Wolfe’s.
“Recruits,” he said. There was nothing but a Codex and a single folded paper on his desk. “Until your final test, your squad demonstrated an outstanding amount of potential.”
“Sir,” Glain said. “Permission to speak?”
The High Commander’s gaze fixed on her, and Jess was very glad it wasn’t aimed at him. “Denied,” he said. “You are here to listen, Recruit Wathen, and not to provide me with excuses. To continue: this squad had a great amount of potential. The last test was, in fact, designed to simulate an ambush of your squad by hostile forces while you were in the performance of regular duties. In the course of that exercise, one of your squad was killed, and another injured. Is that accurate? You may now answer, Wathen. Briefly.”
“That description is accurate, sir,” Glain said. There was no emotion to it. She stared into the distance, somewhere over the High Commander’s squared shoulders.
“The exercise was designed to test your innovativeness, your toughness, your responsiveness, your team’s bonds. How do you feel that you performed in light of this, Recruit Wathen?”
“Sir, our progress toward our goal was steady and careful, and when presented with the unexpected challenge of Greek fire, we took cover and returned fire. We followed procedure. We defended our Scholar at all costs.”
“Ah,” the High Commander said, and leaned back in his chair. “The Scholar. There comes the interesting twist in this tale: you were not assigned a Scholar or anyone representing one. Scholar Wolfe’s intrusion into this space was unauthorized and introduced random factors that call the entire exercise into doubt.”
“Permission to ask a question, sir,” Jess said, and pushed forward before he could be told no. “If Scholar Wolfe wasn’t authorized to be there, then how did he get in?”
It was a simple and revealing question, and the High Commander stared at him unblinkingly for a