Ink and Bone

Jess started on the stack in front of him. Ten, then rest. Adrenaline carried him through tagging and sending the first set; he pushed it and kept going through another five. The books would be appearing in the Archive, into the hands of an Obscurist whose job it was to hand them off to Library staff for safekeeping. One by one by one, Jess kept sending.

He’d lost count when he felt weakness take hold, and staggered against the edge of the table. He grabbed it with both hands and held on until his head stopped spi

Jess nodded; he suddenly realised his legs weren’t holding him up any more, and dropped into a chair. He watched as Khalila took her turn. She activated five in a row, staggered, and caught herself. Dario steadied her with an outstretched hand on her back. She sent him a shaky, grateful smile. Dario sent his own books and managed not to seem affected, though Jess saw he’d gone bone pale. Jess stepped in and relieved him. ‘Here,’ he said, and passed Dario a cup of water. ‘Don’t want you to get ahead of me.’

‘Quality, not quantity,’ Dario shot back, as he collapsed in the chair Jess had left behind.

They both knew that wasn’t true. Not today.

It went on like that, though the players changed; Jess managed fifty tags more before he had to sit down for a long rest, head spi

They’d managed almost all the stack when he heard the clamour echoing from the hallway. It rushed towards them, in the form of Santi, Glain, and the bloodied, hard-breathing bulk of the soldiers. Some of them were being carried, some dragged. Hardly any of them were unmarked.

‘Lost the courtyard,’ Santi said to Wolfe. Over his words, Jess heard the angry roar of a crowd outside the heavy stone walls, and the thud of hands – or weapons – on the door through which Santi’s men had come. ‘They’ve broken the lion. Leave the rest of this.’

‘No,’ Wolfe said. ‘We’ll have to hand-carry them.’

‘You’ve got five tags left. Use them on the students, at least. Send them home.’

‘We both know the trip could kill them. Tags aren’t designed for flesh and blood.’

‘We’re past that. Send them.’ Santi turned towards the students, who’d clustered together again. Jess found himself standing with Dario and Glain, the others behind them. Fighters in front, he thought, and almost smiled. They’d done it unconsciously.

‘I’ll stay,’ Jess said, and heard both Dario and Glain saying it at the same moment, in chorus. They all looked at each other, and in the next instant, the rest were saying it behind them. Thomas. Morgan. Portero. Khalila. All of them.

‘Let me phrase it differently. Who volunteers to take a tag and retreat back to Alexandria?’

‘Is it worse than the Translation Chamber?’

‘Infinitely worse,’ Santi said. ‘We use tags when there is absolutely no escape. I’ve survived it, though. You probably would.’

Portero gave a regretful sigh. ‘The books come first, sir. Isn’t that how it should be? Books before men?’

Wolfe almost smiled. ‘As you see. They’re not children. They’re librarians.’

Santi didn’t seem all that surprised, but he did seem even more grim, if that was possible. ‘Your librarians look like death chewed, swallowed, and vomited them up,’ he said. ‘We have bigger problems. Our major general of the walking dead changed his mind: he’s not letting us walk out the front gates. He’s offered extra rations to anyone who brings us in to him, alive. He intends to use us as hostages.’

Wolfe nodded. He was silent a moment, and then suddenly looked at Jess. ‘We knew that might happen.’

‘And the Welsh aren’t going to hold back,’ Santi said. ‘They’ll kill us along with the English, we both know it. We need an exit, Christopher, and I don’t have one now that you’ve used all the tags.’

‘I believe young Brightwell may be able to help with that.’

Jess involuntarily took a step back, only to run into the solid bulk of Thomas standing behind him, and caught himself in the next instant. Of course, Wolfe would know. Santi would have told him about the message, even if he didn’t understand what it meant.

He’d worry about the level of danger later. Nothing mattered now but finding a way out of the rat-trap they were in, so Jess said, ‘I may be able to get us out. It’ll cost, though.’

Wolfe didn’t seem at all surprised. ‘Where do we go?’

Beneath the sod, Brendan had written in his message. ‘My cousin Frederick should be at the Turf Tavern, sir. Off of Hell’s Passage. He’ll have a way.’

‘Nic?’

‘Map,’ Santi said, and one of his soldiers stepped up to open a round case that held the information. Santi spread the paper – not a blank, real paper, with the information meticulously drawn on it – on the table and anchored the corners with the tags that lay there. ‘We’re here,’ he said, and pressed a fingertip to the small image of a building in a warren of others. ‘The Turf Tavern is here. Not far, but narrow, especially through Hell’s Passage. Hell of a risk if this mob catches up.’

‘Not if we give them something else to focus on.’ Naomi Ebele rose slowly from the table on which she rested, and stood up. One of her fellow librarians took her arm, and she gave him a grateful smile in return. ‘Scholar Wolfe, please send what you can, and take the rest. Help us move the rest back to the vault, and we’ll let them have the Serapeum. They can search to their heart’s content for our stores of food. It will keep them busy enough.’

‘They’ll destroy the place,’ Khalila said. Her voice was hushed, and Jess felt the same dawning, dull horror … this ancient place, with its wood beams hundreds of years old, the gold-leaf ceiling lovingly made, the beautiful high windows. ‘They’ll tear it to pieces when they don’t find what they want.’

‘I know,’ Ebele said. There were tears in her eyes as she looked around, and she put a hand gently on a smooth, age-darkened shelf. ‘And we will build it again.’

Santi said, to Jess, ‘Just who is this cousin of yours?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Wolfe said. ‘If he can get us out, anything else is moot. Postulants, help Librarian Ebele take books to the cellar. We don’t have time to waste – no, not you, Brightwell. You’re with me. We have five more tags left to use, then we take the rest and divide them up. Each one of you will take a few in your pack. Guard them with your lives.’

The other students went with the Oxford library staff, and Santi’s troops dispersed to scout the exits and routes, and suddenly Jess was standing almost alone with Christopher Wolfe in the middle of the doomed Bodelian Serapeum. Wolfe calmly clipped the last of the tags to five more books and handed them to Jess to activate, one by one.

‘How long have you known?’ Jess asked. His voice came ragged and harsh, between deep breaths, as he struggled for the energy to send the two volumes off to safety. ‘About my family?’

‘Since the day you found that hidden compartment in Abdul Nejem’s house,’ Wolfe said. ‘You did a good job of dissembling, but someone unfamiliar with the smuggling trade would never have found it. I admit, finding out about your family’s business was much more difficult. I thought your father was merely a collector at first.’ For a moment, the older man’s expression was the usual harsh, empty mask, and then it softened as Jess wavered and almost dropped. Wolfe grabbed him and eased him into a chair, then crouched next to him with his black robes pooling like spilt ink on the floor. ‘Listen to me. I am prepared to overlook your family and your past, and keep your secrets; I’m always ready to do that, for talent that will serve the Library. But just now, it’s your past, and your family, that will save us. So use it. Use them.’