Ink and Bone

‘Nothing in life is guaranteed. I may not be able to handle the work, after all. Some people prove fragile.’

‘Fragile,’ Jess repeated. ‘Yeah, you don’t strike me that way.’

‘You are also a student, sir?’ her uncle asked.

‘Nowhere near as bright as your niece, sir, but yes.’

‘And from where?’

‘England, sir.’

‘Ah. Are you not at war …?’

‘Not the part of the country I’m from,’ Jess said. The man was too well ma

‘Thank you for your courtesy, Mr Brightwell,’ she said. ‘I wish you a smooth journey as well.’ Very formal, but the smile less so. Not warm, exactly. But not afraid.

And definitely not fragile.

Jess climbed back over Thomas to his seat and said, ‘Well, that’s one placement spoken for; she’ll end up a Curator one day, if not the damned Archivist. My future’s looking dimmer all the time.’ He didn’t mean it. He liked challenges, and this … this was turning out to be one of the best challenges he’d faced in his life. It was boring, always being smarter. Already, he felt he’d have to work for it here.

You’re never coming back. Brendan’s words suddenly returned to him. They were prophetic, because already his family seemed like a fading dream. He felt good here.

He felt right.

As the conductors outside the train windows cried last boarding, a raw-boned young woman ran hell-bent for their car. Not a graceful sort of movement, but those long legs ate up the platform’s length, and she leapt for the still-open door in the last second before the conductor slammed it shut and the train’s whistle blew. She leant against the panelling, flushed and sweating, and overbalanced and fell onto Jess and Thomas’s laps as the train lurched into motion.

No lightweight, this girl. And sharp elbows. Jess winced and rubbed his chest as she fought her way back to her feet and glared at him and Thomas as though they were guilty of an assault on her person.

‘Welcome,’ Thomas said. ‘Thomas Schreiber. Berlin.’ He offered her a hand. She clawed disordered, curling brown hair back from her face, and her glare turned to an outright frown, but she shook. Grudgingly. ‘And you are … ?’

‘Glain Wathen. Merthyr Tydfil.’ She shut up fast as her eyes fell on Jess.

‘Jess Brightwell. London.’

She gave him a sour look, then pushed off and found a seat near the back.

‘She doesn’t like you,’ Thomas said. ‘Does she know you?’

‘No need,’ Jess replied. He could feel Glain’s stare boring into the back of his head. ‘By the sound of her, she’s Welsh. She’s probably making a plan to stick a knife in my kidney before we get to the border.’ When Thomas just continued to look confused, he said, ‘I’m English. Blood feuds. Makes people irrational.’

‘Ah,’ Thomas said, but he didn’t seem particularly illuminated. Not up on his current wars, Jess thought. Or didn’t seem to understand that the Southern Conflict had been going on for more than fifty years, with bloody losses on both the Welsh and English sides. Of late, the Welsh had been handily wi

Glain looked like one of those unpleasant firebrands who couldn’t just leave it at the border. Jess didn’t mind, really. At least that was one fellow student he wouldn’t mind cutting out in competition for a spot.

The miles clacked on, towards their uncertain future.

The Alexandrian border crossing meant that anyone without commissions into Library territory had to disembark, which meant the departure of Khalila’s uncle. He clearly didn’t like leaving his girl to the unwashed masses – and to be fair, they were all fairly unwashed, at the moment, on this train – but he went with good grace.

Jess nodded a polite goodbye, then turned and winked at Khalila. She ignored him. She’d fallen into a hushed, intense conversation with the Welsh girl, Glain, though whatever they had in common he couldn’t imagine. Glain was as plain as Khalila was pretty, and her ma

When he woke up, Thomas had won back most of the money, had a contented, cherubic look on his face, and they were pulling into Alexandria, in Egypt.

Jess wasn’t the only one gawking out the windows; most of those in the car were doing it, even adults with their bands of service on their wrists. Because this city … it was worth seeing.

They were arriving at Misr Station, all gleaming white marble and buff-coloured stones; it was blinding in the noonday glare. The station itself rose three graceful stories of fluted columns, with ancient Egyptian statues of the old gods reaching to the same height. When the carriage stopped, they were facing hawk-faced Horus’s massive feet, and Jess craned his head to look up. The beaked head blocked out the sun, and the gold leaf and blue enamel gleamed brighter than anything Jess had ever seen.

‘Amazing,’ Thomas breathed. ‘Do you think it’s an automaton? At that size?’

Jess shuddered. ‘Perish the thought.’

Thomas scrambled up, grabbed his bag (twice the size of Jess’s, but then, he was twice Jess’s size) and rushed for the train car door. He was onto the platform before Jess could pull his own case from beneath his seat, but he caught up with the German quickly, and against his will, his steps slowed and stopped. The two of them stood together, just drinking it in. The sun felt different here: relentlessly hot, but strangely welcoming just the same. Humid ocean air blew in and ruffled Jess’s hair, drying the sweat that was already beading on his face. And the silent, majestic rows of gods stretched on in a cleanly ordered march that seemed to go on for miles, each one of them different. They’ve all got stories, Jess thought. I need to know them. Best of all, he could know them. He could learn anything here.

It felt like limitless possibilities.

Khalila had joined them, he realised, and was gaping just as openly. Even Glain seemed stu

It seemed so clean.

Soon enough, they’d drawn a real cluster around them, as new postulants disembarked. Maybe it was just because Thomas was so tall and made a good centre pole, but when Jess looked around there must have been thirty of them together, and they were all milling about, uncertain of their next steps … until a man strode out from the shadow of Horus’s feet towards them.

He drew everyone’s attention: black Scholar’s robes that billowed around a plain black day suit. A gleaming gold band on his wrist, chased with elegant hieroglyphs and the Library seal. Dark shoulder-length hair swept back in a mane from a fiercely intelligent face. Narrow, dark eyes, and nut-brown skin. The students fell silent as he approached, and pulled closer together. Gazelles facing a lion, Jess thought.

The Scholar looked them over with unforgiving assessment. The silence stretched until Jess thought it might shatter poor old Horus’s legs, and then the man said, ‘My name is Scholar Christopher Wolfe, and I take it you are incoming postulants. Let me be clear; most of you might as well turn around and board the train now for home. I have six slots to fill, if I decide to fill them at all, which at first glance is unlikely. Does anyone want to book a return now and save themselves the time and pain?’

No one stirred, though several made twitchy moves, as though they were considering it. Not Jess. Nor Thomas, nor Khalila, nor Glain. Rock solid. For now, Jess thought.