Ink and Bone

After all, he knew how to run. He was good at it, and as he ran through the streets of a hot foreign city, dodging between carriages and past startled, swearing pedestrians, he felt at home. His body was in its element, and the pump of blood and wind whipping his hair made him remember what it had been like back home, ru

Even the headache couldn’t spoil the thrill of it, though it sank claws deeper with each necessary glance at the map on his Codex. It was changing, he saw, moving with him. The dot of ink that was his fleeing prisoner didn’t have as much of a head start any more, and as Jess rounded one of Alexandria’s sharp, clean corners, he saw the enormous, ominous stretch of the Iron Tower looming ahead on his left, surrounded by tall fences, gates, and guards. His fugitive wasn’t making for that. He’d swerved right, towards university grounds. The Alexandrian Serapeum’s gigantic pyramid rose up in clean angles beyond that, blurred by distance, and Jess slowed his run just a step or two to check the map.

Santi’s course seemed to be taking him towards the Serapeum.

Jess knew the university grounds by now; he’d walked them daily, to and from Wolfe’s classroom, and he knew the broken path that Santi would have to run between the buildings. I can cut the corner, Jess thought. If I’m right. If he’s making for the pyramid.

He checked the map and watched the progress, just to be certain. The headache suddenly pounded harder, and the flare of it blinded him with black flashes. He tore his gaze away from the map, but the pain didn’t subside this time. Not at all.

Jess slammed his Codex shut and shoved it in his pocket. Headache or not, all he had to do was run – run flat out, the old London way, for the pyramid. He’d either be spectacularly wrong, or absolutely right. It felt good, letting go, letting his legs warm and his stride lengthen, flashing past shops and blurred faces, down a market lane full of exotic silks and spices, through a cloud of steam exhaling from a building’s pipes … and ahead, he saw a flash of black that was moving faster than everything around it.

He’d spotted Santi, and he knew Santi hadn’t spotted him. Right-handed people didn’t generally look to the left when they were trying to avoid pursuit; they looked forward and back and towards their dominant side, unless something drew their eye.

He was going to catch him.

He did catch him, coming at a wide angle from just behind Santi’s left shoulder, and knocking the still-bound man off balance to roll several feet off the path of buildings and onto a shaded patch of rocky dirt. Santi let out a frustrated yell, which Jess only half-heard, because there was something wrong with his ears. And his eyes, because the black flashes that had been constantly crowding his vision were worse now, and the nausea had taken full hold. He couldn’t feel his feet, and the overwhelming, thudding agony of his headache took away the last of his strength.

Jess didn’t feel himself collapse, but when his vision cleared from black to a thin, grey, ghostly mist, he saw the world had tilted on its side, and his prisoner was free, looking down on him and scratching a message into a Codex with a stylus. Jess shut his eyes. He heard a buzz of sound, and felt something that might have been a hand on his shoulder, but all he really felt was the pain.

Words filtered through. Lights. Someone was telling him to keep his eyes closed, and yes, they were right, the pain was just a shade less in the darkness. It was spreading out of his head, into his neck, shoulders, chest, arms, legs. He was made of pain.

And then, finally, he felt a cool, sharp bite on his wrist, and the darkness took on weight, and crushed him down.

He woke up in his bed at Ptolemy House, and the whole thing might have been a bad dream except for the weak trembles of his muscles, and the throbbing remains of the headache. He swallowed and tasted blood.

Someone was sitting in the dark with him, and he instinctively knew it wasn’t Dario Santiago. When he tried to sit up, a hand gently pressed him back down again, and a girl’s voice said, ‘Stay still.’

‘Khalila?’ It didn’t sound like Khalila, but he couldn’t imagine Glain being so kind to him, either.

‘Morgan,’ the voice said. ‘Close your eyes, I’ll turn the light up just a little. Tell me if it’s too much.’

It was, at first, but he held back his wince. After the first few heartbeats, it wasn’t so bad, and he could make out the features of the new girl. It seemed like years since he’d met her, but he supposed it had only been breakfast.

‘What happened to me?’

‘You were brought in by Scholar Wolfe. He said you were not to get up. I was drafted, since I don’t officially have class until tomorrow. The rest are all downstairs.’ She must have read his feeling of abandonment, because she smiled a little. ‘Don’t blame your friends, they wanted to be here. Wolfe summoned them all to give them some kind of news. Do all his lessons end with someone unconscious?’

‘Wait until you hear about the Greek Fire,’ he said. It seemed like a long speech. ‘Is there water?’

She silently fetched a pitcher and glass from the small table, and poured. He drank in convulsive gulps and held it out for more. She refilled, but only halfway. ‘Drink slower,’ she said. ‘You’ll make yourself sick.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

She laughed, and it sounded low and tired. He remembered how she’d looked at breakfast. A day hadn’t been enough time to recover, and now she was spending it tending to him. ‘Definitely not your mother, though I’ve been called worse – wait, what are you doing?’

‘Sitting up.’

‘Wolfe said—’

‘I thought you weren’t my mother.’ She didn’t try to stop him as he struggled up into a half-reclining position. ‘You should go and rest. I’m fine.’

‘I’ve been sleeping, on and off.’

‘In Dario’s bed? That’s punishment enough. I don’t think he’s changed the sheets since he got here. He’s used to having servants for that.’

‘Believe me, dirty sheets are luxury compared to where I’ve been sleeping.’

She’d come out of a war zone, he remembered. His eyes had adjusted to the light, and as he sipped the rest of the water, he studied her more closely. Still tired, with bruised circles beneath her eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ he told her. ‘Go. I promise not to get out of bed until morning.’

Morgan frowned at him a moment, but her weariness was more of an argument than anything he could say, and she finally nodded. ‘You promise?’

‘My word on it.’

She got up, stretched, and left, shutting the door behind her, and before the latch clicked, he was already swinging his feet down to the floor. They were bare, and he hunted for his boots with one hand as he turned up the intensity of the lights. Bringing them up slowly allowed him to cope with the still-ringing gong of his headache. That, and more water. He drained half the jug before he tried to stand.

It was, he decided, a limited success, and after holding himself up for a while, he walked slowly. The hallway beyond was empty. He got to the stairs and rested, then descended.

There were voices coming from the common room, a confusing tangle of them … but they all died away when he appeared in the doorway. Jess tried to look casual about it as he leant there, and hoped he didn’t appear to be on the edge of collapse.

‘You’re supposed to be flat on your back.’ Santiago, surprisingly, was the first one to say something. As if he realised that might smack of concern, he said, in a studiously disinterested tone, ‘Trust you to get special treatment, though.’

‘Sit down,’ Thomas said, and dragged a chair over for Jess to sink into. ‘You should be in bed. Wolfe said—’

‘I’m fine,’ Jess lied. ‘What did I miss?’