Paper and Fire (The Great Library, #2) - Rachel Caine Page 0,62

He’s quite serious about killing you if you don’t.”

“Risk of the trade,” Quest sighed. “But take my advice for your poor Scholar. Find someone who can guide him through that pain. He needs help. I’ve seen it kill stronger men.” He seemed earnest in that moment and not at all trying to make another fee. As if he was actually, genuinely worried.

“Thanks,” Jess said, and meant it. He hailed the little man a carriage. “Don’t make me find you again.”

Quest grinned suddenly. His teeth were surprisingly white. “If I didn’t want to be found, you’d never manage it. One street rat to another, you know that’s truth.”

Then he was gone.

Jess went back inside. “Is he all right?”

“Still here, Brightwell. Thanks for your concern,” Wolfe said. His voice sounded unnaturally low and hoarse as he cradled his head in both hands. “Did you find out what you needed?”

“Yes,” Jess said. “I think so.”

“Then get out.”

“I’m sorry you had to do this—”

“For the love of all the gods, get out!” Wolfe raised his head, and his eyes were wet and streaming with blinding tears of pain and fury. He grabbed for a book and hurled it at Jess with great force. It was only a Blank, but Jess understood just how out of control the man was to fling it.

“Jess,” Santi said. “Go. You have what you wanted. Now I have to help him live through the consequences.”

Jess swallowed hard, nodded, and rolled up the notes he’d made. He closed the door at his back and leaned against it for a long moment with his eyes shut. He tried to forget the awful, tortured sound of Wolfe’s keening.

On the way back to the barracks, he sent coded messages using people he trusted to alert Khalila and Dario to what he’d found out. It was only fair to tell everyone at once. Everyone but Glain, who’d probably deck him hard for what he’d done to Wolfe. Her, he could leave for last.

He was halfway to the barracks when he turned a corner and saw a person lurking ahead, wearing a coat too warm for the weather with the hood raised. His instincts pricked him hard as needles, and he slowed his steps. The shadowy figure melted into an alcove halfway down the block; there weren’t many people out in these dark hours, and the moon was half-hidden behind high, thin clouds. Perfect conditions, he realized, for an assassination, if the Archivist meant to launch one.

Jess moved with deliberate, casual confidence, and eased his knife free of the sheath at his belt as he walked on. He had to use his left hand to keep the knife from view of his would-be killer, who lurked on the right. He wondered whether he should whistle. Might seem too much.

He kept his speed calm and steady as he drew near the alcove, then past it, and when he felt movement behind him, he turned, grabbed hold of the person rushing at him, and jabbed the point of his dagger up under a soft chin.

The hood fell away. The moon whispered out of the clouds overhead and threw a soft, pale light over both of them.

Jess’s lips parted and he let go, because the girl facing him, the girl he’d almost killed, was Morgan Hault.

EPHEMERA

From On Further Nature of the Elements, a late work of the great Archimedes, collected from that master Scholar in the first years of the Great Library. Available on the Codex.

I have many times been asked to explain the nature of the divine fluid of quintessence, the unseen barrier through which all things must pass to change form. I direct your study to the minerals of the earth. The baser metals are found below the surface, in the darkness and silence, and are lumpen and unformed. The finer metals and minerals—silver, gold, all precious ores and gems—are found in an organic structure of life. They grow, treelike, slowly through many years, rising up through the invisible richness of quintessence, and are transmuted from the base to the precious as they rise toward heaven.

All things live. That which begins as inorganic becomes organic through the divine power of quintessence. And so we must learn to control this unknowable element, to discover how to make metals, minerals, the organic and inorganic alike transmute and transfigure, above and below the earth.

This knowledge is obscure, but it must be sought. It must be codified, taught, and revered, for only through this great work will the secrets of