Paper and Fire (The Great Library, #2) - Rachel Caine Page 0,83
proved that. Armies didn’t always obey the accords. Kingdoms fell. But the ideal was worth preserving.
I don’t want to bring an end to this, Jess thought, and was suddenly afraid that was exactly what he’d be doing if they succeeded.
But there wasn’t much choice. Not if Thomas was to be free.
Jess moved out through the outer Serapeum doors to the moonlight-washed steps.
Dario was right: Rome was magical at night. The marble glittered soft as snow, and the stars above were hard and bright, set in a deeply black sky. A breeze moved down from the hills and brought with it the smell of dusty olive trees and sun-warmed stones. He descended quickly. The lions were clustered together near the other end of the building, the end where the Artifex would be sleeping in peace, no doubt. If the old man thought about Thomas at all, it was probably only with satisfaction that he’d stopped what he saw as the downfall of the Library.
That thought strengthened Jess as he moved through the deserted Forum, past empty temples and the shadowy forms of gods. There were no patrols out that he could see, not in this direction, but he went quickly anyway, moving from shadow to shadow, checking constantly in all directions.
Then he was at the statue of Jupiter. It towered far up, and from this foreshortened view it looked massive and monstrous. What if it’s an automaton? The thought struck him with real unease. A colossus like this could crush buildings, destroy armies. He put a hand on the metal. It felt warm, but a natural kind of warmth, residue from the day’s sun.
The foot looked ancient and solid, and Jess ran his hands over the pitted surface, worn by time, and realized that ancient as it was, Jupiter couldn’t have been here for more than a thousand years. This Forum had been a meeting place far longer than that. Roots run deep. Jupiter sat over the entrance.
He found the opening between the statue’s feet, shrouded beneath the falling golden drapes of the toga. Just enough room to squirm under into the hollow spaces, and send a large rat squeaking away in alarm. Set into the cobbles lay an old iron grate. Jess pried it up with his knife and carefully put it aside. The opening was hardly large enough to fit through, but he managed, and dropped into a damp, echoing darkness that smelled of mold and the faint, pungent whisper of rot.
Jess shook a chemical light to life, and the yellowish glow washed over rough stones built in a strong, arched structure only a little taller than his head. It had a shallow trough in the middle, through which ran a slow trickle of moisture. And though—as Dario had promised—these sewers were long disused, except to channel rainwater, the smell of old waste lingered. The tunnel seemed sound, and he went carefully, tossing the light ahead as he went to be sure nothing dangerous waited. The darkness was complete and claustrophobic. It felt like an almost physical weight against his shoulders, and he tried not to think about the old stones pressing down. It’ll collapse someday, he thought. But not today. Keep your nerve. It reminded him of the old tunnels beneath Oxford, but these were far older. He found engraved stones inset in the walls depicting a group of toga-wearing men gathered around a bull. The tunnel angled down. He felt the strain of it in the backs of his legs, and had to be careful not to slip on mold, but then it leveled again and twisted in two directions. The basilica would be to the right, but just in case, he dropped one of the portable glows at the tunnel entrance before going on.
There was no sound here except for the faint rustling of rats and insects running from the light and the trickle of water in the tunnel’s center. He passed another engraving in the left-hand wall, then another, and then, finally, the tunnel split again. One side veered right and up. The other went down.
He dropped another glow and followed the left-hand path into the dark. It seemed to be a long journey, and then, suddenly, he heard something that didn’t belong here. Something up ahead, a scraping noise that sounded deliberate. A faint whirring.
He doused the glow and blinked, because an afterimage of it remained printed on his eyes. No, the glow he saw was a faint red.