Ink and Bone

So many. The room had a vividly familiar smell to Jess, a crisp, dusty aroma that woke memories of his father’s warehouses. Of old books cradled in his hands, or strapped against his chest.

The smell of history.

Even Wolfe took in a breath at the sight of what lay before them, because it was a massive number of written works, more than most of them would ever see in their lives. Jess, who’d touched more originals than they’d ever dream, was silenced by the sight, and felt a prickle not just of awe, but actual alarm.

‘As you see,’ Ebele said, ‘We have a problem.’

‘Agreed,’ Wolfe said. ‘Your message was cut before you could report the actual numbers of what you’d found, but we did gather that it was large. This is … not large. It is enormous.’

‘A rare prize,’ she agreed. ‘You see why I could not abandon my post, even under orders.’

No librarian could, not when the Welsh army was poised to rain down fire and death on the city, and when everything in it had been named fair game. This wasn’t a prize, these thousands of books burdening the tables of the Bodleian Serapeum of Oxford.

This was a holy treasure.

‘We can’t.’ Khalila’s voice shook with emotion, and she took a breath to steady it. ‘We can’t possibly manage to send so many, even if we have enough tags!’

‘Then we sort and save what we can,’ Wolfe said. ‘Form into teams of two and sort into three stacks: unique, rare, common. Go. We have little time.’

Khalila paired up with Dario, and they immediately went to work. Thomas had already chosen – unexpectedly – Portero. Jess looked for Morgan, and didn’t find her. He gestured Glain over and asked, but Glain just shrugged.

‘Don’t know. Come on, let’s get started.’

‘I know most of the rare things,’ Jess said. ‘You organise and read me titles.’ What did Wolfe have Morgan doing? And where had Wolfe gone? He was nowhere in sight now, though the rest of them were clustered around the table, working as he’d instructed.

Glain sent him a silent look of gratitude, and opened the first book. ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to the Cultivation of Wheat, Including the Diseases to which it is Prone. Author Hywel Pryor.’

‘Common. And boring.’

‘Unless you like to eat,’ Glain said. Touché. ‘On the Circumference of the Planets. Author Ping Le. Translated from the Chinese.’

‘Rare. Careful with that one.’

‘On Sphere Making.’ He stopped dead, staring at her, and he could feel the blood draining from his head down towards his feet. Glain glanced up at him, and gave him a hard smile. ‘We couldn’t be that lucky. The title is A Process of Iron, by Gwen Neame. A novel.’

‘Rare, and don’t do that again.’

‘Don’t joke? What should I do, weep? Will it help?’

‘It might,’ he said, thinking of those desperate walking dead outside the gates. ‘We’re taking too long. Just read the titles.’

Glain began a steady drone of them, and when Jess didn’t know them, he used the Codex. He spotted Morgan, finally; she was off with Wolfe in a corner, arguing fiercely. He couldn’t hear anything, but he knew that look.

She wanted to find her father, he guessed. And Wolfe wasn’t risking her out on the streets. Good, Jess thought. From what he’d seen out there, the chances were high that if she found her father at all, he’d already be dead.

‘Focus,’ Glain said, and snapped fingers in front of his face. ‘You’re slowing down. Stare at your girlfriend later.’

‘She isn’t my girlfriend,’ Jess said.

And got back to work.

It took hours to work their way through the enormous stack; at the end, each team took their unique and rare book stacks and moved them to one of the end tables. It still formed a formidable mountain. As Wolfe examined each volume himself, and sorted it into two more stacks, he glanced up. His dark gaze landed on Jess. ‘Check outside,’ he said. ‘Santi hasn’t been in to give a report. Not like him.’

Jess nodded and hurried down the hallway. Glain preceded him, opened the locked door, and let him through. He glanced back as he stepped over the threshold, and said, ‘You’re locking me out, aren’t you?’

‘Just for safety,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Good luck.’

She shoved him on a step and slammed the wood at his back. He heard the locks grinding shut behind him, and took in a breath of icy, damp air as he took in the situation of the courtyard.

The weather had turned while he was in the timeless silence of the Bodleian building; overhead, the clouds were flat and low, and the rain had turned to spits of sleet. The ancient steps were coated and slick.

There was blood on the cobblestones inside the gates, in a wide, watery smear. New chains fastening the stout iron; the lock must have broken. Outside the gates lay bodies, at least ten of them – men, women, even the small, still form of a child. Jess stared at them, at the blood, and when he looked up, he saw Niccolo Santi.

The captain looked grim. There was a thin thread of blood on his cheek that wasn’t his own, and cuts in the black cloth on the arm of his uniform. ‘What are you doing out here?’ he demanded. Jess took in the rest of the scene in a hasty glance – one set of soldiers standing guard at the bars, another sitting against the courtyard walls, huddled in coverings. One was very still beneath his blanket – asleep, badly injured, or dead.

‘Wolfe sent me to check.’

‘Tell him we were lucky. This old ironwork isn’t likely to keep them back next time, and neither will our guns; if they come in numbers, they’ll get into the courtyard this time.’

‘How many of your men—’

‘Just tell him the sand’s ru

‘You think the mob will come back?’

‘They’re convinced that the library is filled with sacks of food and fresh ru

Jess retreated back up the stairs. He banged on the door, and listened to the scrape of the locks and bars being removed. He tried to imagine standing out here under vicious attack, killing the sick, the weak, children.

Knowledge is all. The Library’s motto, and this was what it meant in the real world. It meant that nothing, nothing was more valuable. Not even lives.

It seemed like mockery, looking at those desperate faces.

Jess shoved the door open the instant it was free, pushing Glain back. When she protested, he ignored it. ‘Keep it unlocked,’ he told her. ‘And stay here. Santi may need to retreat at any time.’

‘But—’

‘Stay here!’

He stalked down the hall. The drag of his muddy Library cape on his shoulders made him feel older. Harder. More breakable than he had been just a few days before.

He reported to Wolfe. Wolfe had attention only for the books he was combing through, but he nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘We’re ready to start tagging. I need you.’

‘I put Glain on the door, sir.’

‘Good. She’s well placed.’ Finally, Wolfe looked up at him. Jess’s classmates were grouped together at the other end of the table with the Oxford Library staff, whispering; no one was obviously listening to him and Wolfe, yet he knew that all of them were paying attention. ‘How many tags can you handle?’

Jess’s first impulse was to honestly say, I don’t know, but instead, what came out was entirely different. ‘As many as you need.’

‘Do ten, rest, eat, do ten more. Keep going until you can’t. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Wolfe handed him a supply of tags.

‘We’re supposed to enter them by hand in the Codex—’

‘Skip the tick boxes. Seif! Santiago! Get over here. I’ll want you to do three tags, break for food and five minutes’ rest, then three more. When you start feeling sick, step out.’