Ink and Bone

Wolfe and Santi hustled all of them back into the tavern’s dark, cramped interior, until everyone with a Library symbol was safely out of sight. Jess pulled his hood back and arranged himself at one of the windows; Wolfe and Santi had taken up similar posts.

‘Will he sell us out?’ Wolfe asked.

‘No,’ Jess said, but he thought, maybe. He didn’t know Frederick well enough to say. He only knew that it was up to which side of the bread Frederick thought had the most butter, and that depended on things he couldn’t know, like whether Frederick would keep a bargain.

He already had the book, after all.

‘Back exit is clear,’ Santi said to Wolfe. ‘I had it scouted when we got here. Won’t get us far, though. We’ll never make it out the main gate, not with Smith setting the mob after us with the promise of food.’

‘Let’s not give up on Cousin Frederick just yet.’

Santi shrugged, as if he thought it was a foregone conclusion. Jess didn’t blame him, given that he wasn’t so certain about their prospects himself. If the mob came boiling out of that passage, he imagined Cousin Frederick might decline to put himself in deeper to save them.

It wasn’t the mob, though.

It was one man. Old, greying, rail-thin from the deprivations of the siege. He edged along, propped his left shoulder on the wall as a crutch, but he stopped when he saw Frederick’s men arrayed before him.

He might have looked frail, but there was a dark intensity in his face.

‘Welcome, friend,’ Frederick said from where he leant against the Turf’s wall, and gave the man a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Sorry, pub’s closed for business. Sad days, eh?’

‘I want my daughter,’ the man said.

‘No girls here, mate. Sorry.’

‘She’s here. I followed.’ The man’s voice was unsteady, and Jess realised, as he edged a little farther, that he was bloody, too, as if he’d been in a fight. ‘Bloody Library has her. Give her to me. I don’t want to hurt anyone.’

The threat woke a raw chuckle through the ranks of Frederick’s very capable toughs. ‘Old man, just go back where you came from,’ Frederick said. ‘Your girl’s not here, like I said. Ned, help him on his way.’

The biggest man of Frederick’s crew stepped up and put a hand on the older man’s shoulder … and froze, then backed up one step. Two. He turned to look at Frederick and shook his head.

The older man raised his right hand over his head, and in it, he held a glass vial of liquid. The thin light caught it and turned the colour to sour emerald.

‘Don’t touch me,’ he said. ‘Send my daughter out to me. If I toss this, a fair number of you are going to die.’

‘Easy,’ Frederick said, in a calm, low voice. ‘Easy there, nobody needs to end up crisped. Right? So put that down and I’ll see about your girl. Come on, burning the Turf? Worse than setting the Great Library itself alight. Might be more of a loss to the world, even.’

‘Send her out,’ the man said. His voice went thready and faint. He pushed free of the wall, still holding up the bottle.

Frederick’s men, who weren’t scared of much, flinched and backed up to give him generous room.

‘Got nothing to lose. Send my daughter out,’ the man repeated. ‘Morgan Hault. Or I drop it.’

Jess saw the resemblance, then … the same dark-honey eyes, though this man’s had faded with time. The same pointed chin.

‘Father?’ Morgan’s voice came from behind and to his left, and he didn’t have time to do more than turn in that direction before she was past him, and out the door. ‘Father! Are you all right?’ She ran to him, and gave him a quick embrace, then pulled back when he winced. She hardly seemed to notice the Greek Fire he was still holding over their heads, in the first rush of reunion … and Jess saw her body stiffen as she did. She took a step away. ‘What is this? What are you doing? You have to put that down, it’s dangerous!’

‘Damned right it’s dangerous,’ he said. ‘I came to save you, Morgan.’

She laughed a little. ‘I don’t need rescuing, Father. I’m rescuing you. We’re leaving. Now. Come with us.’

‘Us,’ he repeated. ‘You think of these people as us, as if you’re one of them? You can’t be. Not with the Library. The Library isn’t taking you away.’ Her father, Jess thought, had a fanatic’s burning eyes, and the look he sent towards Wolfe, towards them as they stepped out into the courtyard, was vicious with hatred. ‘Take their damned sign off. You’re not their slave—’ His voice died as he caught sight of the bronze Library bracelet gleaming dully on her wrist. ‘No. No. You’re not one of them. You can’t be one of them. I forbid it.’

‘Father—’

‘Morgan, take it off!’

‘I will. Just not yet. These are my friends. See? My friends. And we’re all leaving here. You can come with us. Please, come with us.’

Her father stared at her with an expression of contempt and revulsion, and said, ‘They’ve turned your mind. Made you believe they’re on your side. Who did it, that one? That Scholar? What did you do to my daughter?’

‘I’ve helped her,’ Wolfe said. ‘Which is more than you’re doing right now. We have little time before the Welsh begin to destroy this city. If you don’t want her to die, stop wasting it.’

‘She’s coming with me,’ Hault said, and tightened his grip on the girl. ‘She’ll never be yours. Tyler told me what happened, what would happen if she went into the Library. Not my girl. Never.’

‘Father, stop! Where are you going?’

‘Back,’ he said. ‘Back to burn that nest of serpents they call a Serapeum. Come on!’

Morgan broke free of his hold. ‘What happened to you? What are you talking about?’

‘We have to burn it down,’ her father said. ‘It’s the only way they listen.’ He was insane, Jess could see it. Feverish with it.

She backed away. ‘You weren’t a Burner when I left you,’ she said. ‘What did they do to you?’

‘They showed me the truth,’ he told her. ‘I can’t let the Library have you. They’ll use you. They’ll make you just another one of them, and it’s better – better if you’re dead. Better that than life with them.’ He took in a deep breath. ‘Vita hominis plus libro valet!’

He threw the bottle.

‘No!’ Morgan screamed, and lunged forward. Somehow, she got underneath the bottle, dived, and caught it in her outstretched hands just inches above the cold cobbles. The green liquid inside sloshed, but the thin glass didn’t break.

It would have been the death of them all if it had.

Santi stepped quickly over to Morgan, helped her up, and took the bottle. He stored it in a padded pouch at his side and nodded to Wolfe. ‘Get behind me, Morgan.’

She didn’t argue. She was, Jess thought, too much in shock to even try. When she failed to move on her own, Jess took her by the shoulders and pulled her back; he held on, just in case she tried to run back to her father.

But she didn’t.

‘Go,’ Santi said. He pulled his pistol and levelled it at Morgan’s father. ‘Go. Be grateful I’m not doing the Welsh’s work for them.’

‘I’ll get my daughter back,’ the man said. ‘I swear to God I will set her free.’

He stared straight at Morgan with a bleak, awful expression, and then he turned and stumbled the other way.

Frederick shrugged and made a circle motion to his men. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘He was a treat. If he’s got Burner friends and more Greek Fire, I don’t want to be here when he comes back. Sorry, lass. Can’t pick your family. Believe me, I know.’

Morgan suddenly turned and buried her face in Jess’s chest. She didn’t cry, but the hitching, awful pain of her breathing was worse. He could feel the loss in her, a terrible bleak emptiness that pulled like a magnet.

‘He tried to kill me,’ she whispered. ‘He’s my father and he tried to kill me.’

Jess had nothing to say to that, because there were no words that were going to make it any easier to swallow. He remembered how it had felt in that awful moment of clarity in his childhood, knowing that his father would let him die.