Ink and Bone

‘Fine.’ Jess let go and stepped back. He offered his hand, again. ‘Let’s start over. Jess Brightwell.’

The Spaniard continued to stare at him with a slight frown grooved above those sharp eyes, and he finally took Jess’s hand and gave it a too-firm squeeze. ‘Dario Santiago,’ he said. ‘We won’t be friends.’

‘Probably not,’ Jess said. ‘But we will be sharing this room.’

Dario’s lips suddenly curved into a truly amused smile. ‘You may not prefer that, in the end.’

For some reason, Jess had assumed that Library classes would be held, well, in the Library, though that institution was more of a sprawling, vast complex than any single building. He’d expected a steady diet of classrooms and essays and tests, the same as he’d had back in London at the Library-administered public schools.

But Scholar Wolfe wasn’t so predictable.

At dawn the next morning, shrill bells rang throughout the dormitory, throwing Jess groaning from his bed, still sore and stupid with exhaustion. He hadn’t unpacked, and struggled with the suitcase locks for far too long before he remembered how to work them properly. Inside, his clothes smelt of damp, of London, and he felt a strange pang of homesickness for a moment, though not for his family so much as familiarity.

He grabbed a clean pair of trousers, shirt, underwear and a vest, and hurried for the bathroom.

Too late. Dario was already inside, with the door firmly locked. Jess cooled his heels and seethed as Dario took his sweet, leisurely time. He was still waiting when Thomas banged on the outer door, cracked it, and said, ‘Coming, English? You’re late!’

‘I’m still waiting for the shower! He’s slower than my mother.’

‘You’d better come anyway. Scholar Wolfe is not a man to keep waiting.’

That was certainly true, just from the first acquaintance at the train station. Jess cursed softly and stripped down as Thomas politely turned his broad back. He was pulling on his boots when Dario finally unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out, wreathed in a herb-scented cloud of steam. He looked fresh, perfect, and every inch a gentleman.

Jess felt like an unwashed, grainy-eyed lout, but he yanked his boots in place and followed. Thomas stood aside to let Dario pass, and raised his pale eyebrows at Jess. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Jess said.

‘The key must be to get up before him,’ Thomas said.

‘Thank you for spotting the obvious.’

Thomas just gri

The common room on the ground floor was already filled, and Jess felt even worse, seeing that everyone else had managed freshly washed faces and neatly arranged hair. He tried to finger-comb his into some semblance of order, but from Thomas’s mournful head shake, it wasn’t a success.

Scholar Wolfe didn’t come for them. Instead, he sent a tall man dressed in the intimidating black of the Library’s High Garda elite, with a gold band on his wrist. The weapons he kept on his belt looked well cared for, and perhaps more significantly, well used.

Thomas nudged him with an unsubtle elbow and leant close to whisper, ‘He is a Library soldier!’

‘I know that,’ Jess whispered back. ‘What’s he doing here?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘Perhaps frightening us?’

Accurate observation, because the man swept them with an indifferent, middle-distance stare that was more intimidating than a glare. He took a swift count and said just two words: ‘With me.’ Then walked down the hall, leaving them all to scramble along in his wake.

Outside, there were no waiting carriages, and the High Garda soldier led them down the boulevard at a quick-march pace. The sun was just rising, but it was already unreasonably hot and damp, and clothing that had seemed comfortable in London quickly felt smothering in Alexandria. Jess thought that it was an advantage to have skipped the shower, in all, because while he was sweating through his clothes, so were the others, even Dario, and by the time they finally came to a halt in front of a nondescript low building, Jess seemed no worse off than his fellows.

They’d walked all the way to the harbour, Jess realised; he could see the steamships bobbing beyond the low roofs, and the large passenger ships moving in to the docks, ready to disembark their travellers. He longed to see all that; he’d always loved being on the docks in London, with all the noise and activity. The half-reeking, half-fresh smell of the sea seemed like home.

But instead, their guide led them to a silent, darkened building with a single entrance. No windows. Going inside it felt like walking into a tomb … and the floor slanted down.

‘Where are we?’ he asked Thomas, but the bigger young man just shook his head. The ceiling was low enough that Thomas had to stoop. The walls were plain, but they seemed to have dirty smudges on them, and the whole place reeked of an acrid, chemical smell. Not that he had time to ponder it, because their High Garda guide was still walking at a brisk, martial pace.

Then, suddenly, they emerged into a much wider, taller room. Jess took three steps inside and stopped, craning his head upward to admire the vaulting height of it. Someone shoved him from behind, and he moved out of the way to a spot on the side of the room. It was rounded, and like the hallway, bare of decoration. Their small group of thirty didn’t take up much room in the relatively vast space.

The room seemed very sparse. Impressive, but empty; the walls had the same dark smudges, and the air still carried that sharp, chemical tang. It reminded Jess of something, but he couldn’t think what.

In silence, they waited. Their High Garda guide had disappeared, leaving the rest of them staring at each other. Jess had met most of the postulants, though the names escaped his tired brain at present; he most vividly knew Dario, of course, and Thomas. He spotted Khalila standing off on her own, looking fresh and calm in her headdress and loose robes, while the Welsh girl Glain towered over the other females by several inches.

None of them spoke. A few shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other in discomfort from the long walk, but by common consent, they understood this was not a place for conversation.

And then Wolfe emerged from the single entrance, and walked into the centre of the room. He looked just as he had at the train station: dark, dangerous, and impatient. He took a moment to look around the room at each of them, and then said, ‘Here begins your first lesson. You stand in the first daughter library of Alexandria, the first Serapeum. In this room, copies of works from the stores of the Great Library were first made available to anyone who cared to come and read them … even women, though that was not common practice at the time. Alexandria was the first place in the world to encourage common people to read and learn. The first to educate without regard to status, creed, sex or religion. You stand in the birthplace of our history.’

He let that sit for a moment, and in truth, Jess could feel the weight of it bearing down on him. The walls had been renovated, obviously, but the floor had not. It was ancient stone, worn smooth by millions of steps taken across it. Aristotle might have walked here, he thought. Might have scratched out that first copy of On Sphere Making, sitting at a table right over there.

It gave him a chill, as if he was surrounded by ghosts.

‘The reason I am here as your proctor is to teach you who we are. What we do. And we begin here in this place where the Great Library took the first steps towards what it has become.’ He paused, studying them. ‘Do you understand what the job of a librarian is?’

It seemed like a stupid question, and hands shot up. Wolfe sighed. ‘You are not children,’ he said, ‘and I will not favour the shy. Speak out if you have an answer.’