Ink and Bone

‘There’s a lottery tomorrow,’ Khalila said. ‘We all have to draw tiles.’

For a moment, he thought the headache had permanently damaged his brain, because that made no sense. He repeated it. ‘All of us? We all failed?’

‘Every damned one of us, apparently,’ Dario affirmed. ‘Including Khalila. I can only think that the rest of you were so miserably bad that our sweet desert flower suffered by association.’

‘He didn’t explain why we failed?’

‘Not a word,’ Khalila said. The mood in the room was dark and heavy, and someone had broken out a bottle of Scottish whisky that Jess suddenly wanted very badly. ‘I was there, Jess. We found the books – well, you found them. And we arrested the guilty. How did we fail? What is he trying to teach us?’

‘Wait,’ Jess said. ‘When is the lottery?’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Thomas said. He was sitting, and his whole body spoke of how dejected he was, from the curve of his back to the low-hanging head. ‘It’s entirely unfair.’

‘No one said life was fair,’ Danton said; coming from France, Jess supposed he had a unique perspective on that. ‘He needs to reduce the class; he told us from the start that he’d only accept six in the end. I suppose this is how he goes about it. Unfairly.’

‘He doesn’t have the right!’ Glain was, predictably, incensed.

‘He has every right,’ said Dario. ‘He’s our proctor. They turned away tens of thousands when they accepted thirty of us. The Library has a surplus of people with promise. We’re ten a geneih.’

‘So why do you think he failed us all? He must have some reason!’

Dario shrugged. ‘I think he did it because he can. And resents us. A Research Scholar like him, slumming with us? Why? I can only guess it was a punishment for him to be put in charge of rank amateurs like us.’

That was an interesting thought, and it made a certain amount of sense. Research Scholars, like Wolfe, were constantly on the move out in the world, conducting research, experiments, doing the work of the Library. Having him as nursemaid to students seemed … wasteful, and the Library wasn’t known for that.

‘I know why we failed,’ said a quiet voice. Slowly, the conversation slowed, then ceased, and they all looked around for who’d said it. Near the fire, Izumi raised her head. She almost always spoke softly, even diffidently, but she was rarely wrong. ‘We failed because we didn’t ask.’

‘Ask what?’ Jess said.

‘What would happen to the books we confiscated.’

‘We know what happened to them. We sent them back to the Archives. We used the tags, just the way he taught us,’ Dario said. ‘It would be a stupid question.’

Izumi finally raised her head and looked at him directly. There was something unexpectedly fiery in her steady gaze. ‘Were the books you found unique?’

Dario shrugged. ‘Rare enough.’

‘But already in the Codex.’ Izumi looked at the rest of them, a quick sweep of her gaze. ‘Did anyone find a unique book?’

No one spoke. Jess ran it over in his mind; he’d found rare volumes, but nothing that wasn’t listed.

‘What does the Library do with rare volumes that aren’t unique?’ Izumi asked. ‘We sent them to the Archive, using the tags, but what does the Archive do with them once they arrive?’

‘Preserve them,’ Portero answered. ‘That’s their job.’

‘Is it? Why should they? They have the originals. They mirror them to blanks. What use do they have for another copy?’ She paused for a moment, and then plunged on. ‘I have heard they destroy them. In a furnace.’

‘That’s a lie!’

‘Is it? Why not just destroy it? One less copy for the smugglers to trade!’

‘It’s not possible,’ Thomas said. ‘The Library, destroying books? It goes against everything they teach us!’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It does. But so does a lot of what they do here.’ Izumi tapped the blank she’d been reading to clear it, and walked over to put it back on the shelf. Then she left.

‘She can’t be serious,’ Glain asked. ‘The Library can’t be destroying books in secret.’

‘But we didn’t ask. She’s right about that,’ Jess said. ‘We don’t know anything that happens once the books go to the Archive.’

The students erupted in a frenzy of debate, which turned to resentful speculation about just which of them would be leaving in the morning. Some were outspoken about not playing Wolfe’s game this time. There were two sides forming: some who thought this was a ploy by Wolfe to see who would stand up for themselves, and some who didn’t want to risk his wrath.

Jess was just too disheartened to care. He didn’t even record it in his journal.

There didn’t seem to be a point.

The next morning, Wolfe wasn’t there. Neither was breakfast, which usually was laid out on the common room sideboard before the bells clanged dawn. When Jess came down to claim his portion, it was a portion of nothing.

Instead, there was a blank sitting on the empty sideboard, open to the first page, and Jess walked over to read what it said.

It simply said, Draw a tile.

The lottery jar was sitting next to the blank. Jess stared at it for a moment without moving until he heard footsteps behind him. Heavy ones. He knew who they belonged to even before Thomas said, softly, ‘Mein Gott, he meant it, didn’t he?’

‘He meant it,’ Jess said. He was seething inside for the unfairness of it … he’d gone along with Wolfe, done everything he asked, even chased Santi down with that damned map. He’d driven himself half-dead for the man. And this is what he got in return … a good chance at being dismissed for nothing.

Thomas joined him in staring at the words on the blank, and then at the jug, which had a scene on it of Horus and Ma’at. For the first time, seeing it this close, Jess realised that both the jug and tiles were old … very old. The smooth ivory pieces were worn and yellowed by the touch of thousands of sweaty, nervous hands.

Then Thomas sighed and reached out to take a tile.

Jess grabbed his arm to stop him. ‘Don’t.’

‘If I don’t take one, I will be finished anyway,’ Thomas said. ‘We should do as Wolfe says.’

Thomas fished around in the jug and drew out a single tile, which he clenched in his fist. He didn’t look at it. When Jess mutely gestured to it, Thomas shook his head. ‘There is no point in looking,’ he said. ‘Either I will stay, or I will go, and it is beyond my control now. Come, Jess, choose and let’s sit down by the fire. It’s damp this morning.’

Because Thomas was with him, a calm and silent witness, Jess didn’t think there was any way out of it, and he didn’t want to seem afraid, though he was, down to his bones. His future rode on this single, stupid, meaningless chance.

He didn’t look. He just plunged his hand into the jar, fumbled blindly, and yanked free a tile. He shoved it into his pocket, next to his Codex, because if he’d held on to it he wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to stare at the number on it, as if it was some mysterious fortune-teller in the market.

Morgan was the next one into the room, with Izumi; the two girls seemed to have struck up a friendship, though a quiet one. Morgan looked better rested, Jess thought, and she’d changed from her stifling English clothing into a loose linen dress in a pale Mediterranean blue. It suited her, he thought. There was colour in her cheeks now, and he watched her stop in the doorway with Izumi, taking in the room. Morgan’s eyes met his, and she nodded a little, without smiling. He nodded back.

‘Is it normal to have tiles for breakfast?’ she asked.

‘Every Thursday,’ Thomas said, all too cheerfully. ‘Crunchy. Good for the digestion.’

Izumi rolled her eyes, walked over, and chose a tile. ‘I wish they’d at least brought the coffee,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can face this without coffee.’

Morgan was staring at the jug doubtfully, and Jess could tell that she was wondering whether or not she should pull a number. It was, after all, her first official day as a student; if she was unlucky, she wouldn’t even have a full day of it before dismissal.