Ink and Bone

It all combined to make him irritable. ‘You don’t have to stay here,’ he said. ‘I promise not to run away if you take your eyes off me.’

‘Do you?’ She turned a page. ‘I’m not sure I believe you. You’re not someone who understands his limits. I personally saw you tag so many books you almost fell unconscious.’

‘I’m much better.’

‘That’s exactly the issue. You think you are. It makes you foolish.’

‘So Wolfe assigned you?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ She calmly turned another page. ‘Would you like something?’

‘I’d like to get up and at least go outside. See something different.’

‘My home, still burning? The corpses of my neighbours? Is that different enough for you?’ She pulled her knees up closer to her chest. ‘Just shut up.’

God, that was clever of me, Jess thought. He didn’t know how to apologise for being so clumsy, so unthinking. ‘What are you reading?’ he asked instead.

Morgan said nothing for a moment, then passed over the book. It was Inventio Fortunata, written long ago by an Oxford monk. He’d held another hand copy of this book once. He’d read it the last night he’d slept in his family’s home.

‘I’m not going back to Alexandria,’ she said. ‘Wolfe says the Obscurist Magnus knows, and she’s issued orders for my immediate return. I have to run. Maybe to London, I can lose myself there.’

‘Ask for my father, Callum Brightwell,’ Jess said. ‘Tell him I said to help you.’

‘He won’t—’

‘Betray you? Not to the Library.’ Jess handed the book back, and their fingers brushed. It wasn’t much of a touch, but it meant something that she didn’t pull away quickly.

It meant something that she tried to smile through the brightness of her tears.

Wolfe stepped into the tent then, and whatever she might have said was lost. His dark eyes darted from Jess, to Morgan, and back to rest on Jess. ‘We’ll be leaving in the morning,’ he said. ‘The Welsh have abided by the covenants, but they’re not happy about it, and they want us gone. You’re not well enough, but we need to move before their patience is completely gone. We will head for London.’ Wolfe’s gaze passed from Jess over to Morgan. ‘They’re sending the Express for us.’

The Alexandrian Express was a special train, one that used technology only the Library possessed; it was fast as lightning, and ran on special rails that only the Express could use. It was reserved, Jess had thought, for only the most senior officials of the Library on diplomatic missions, or for the personal use of the Archivist; he’d never seen it himself, and he didn’t know anyone who had.

It wouldn’t stop from the time it left London until it arrived in Alexandria. Morgan would have no chance to escape from it.

‘You could let me go on the way to London,’ Morgan said.

‘No,’ Wolfe said. ‘I can’t risk it. I’m sorry.’

‘Why were you even helping her in the first place?’ Jess asked. ‘If you’re just going to turn your back now?’

‘I told you, Brightwell. I keep secrets. But not at the risk of my own life. Not any more.’

Jess sat up and swung his legs off the bed. He felt weak and hot, but much better now that the effects of the painkilling morphine had passed. The wound didn’t ache too badly, but when he tensed his stomach muscles to stand, it escalated quickly. He managed, though his legs didn’t seem any too steady.

‘And where do you imagine you’re going?’ Wolfe asked him.

‘I’m tired of using a pot. I’m going to the privy.’

‘The Welsh accommodations are about what you’d expect for a battlefield. I don’t know that you’ll find it an improvement.’ Wolfe watched him, but didn’t offer him any support. Jess leant against a tent pole for a moment, then grabbed a clean, plain shirt that someone had left for him and pulled it on. That hurt, too, and required another pause for breath. A long one.

‘You’ll never make it on your own,’ Morgan said. She stood up. ‘I’ll go.’

‘To the privies and back,’ Wolfe said. ‘Any deviations and the alarm sounds. And you know what happens then.’

‘You find me,’ she said. ‘I know.’

Jess listened to that with total incomprehension, and couldn’t form the question before Wolfe stalked away, out of the tent. He turned his gaze on Morgan.

She shrugged. ‘I tried to run,’ she said. ‘While you were drugged. I got outside the camp before I was caught by the Welsh, and if Thomas hadn’t come to help … it might not have gone well for me. It caused an incident.’

‘An incident?’

‘The Welsh general demanded that Wolfe hand me over for punishment, or give up Library neutrality. Wolfe compromised.’ She held up her wrist, and instead of the temporary Library bracelet, she was wearing something Jess recognised: two loops of gold wire, with the Library symbol on a seal in the middle. They were normally used as restraints across two wrists, but Wolfe had used it just on the one for her.

It looked like jewellery, but it wasn’t. It was a tracking device. The same kind Jess had used to follow Santi in Alexandria.

‘He knows where I go now,’ she said. ‘And if I try to leave. For my safety.’ Morgan came to Jess’s side and took his left arm in a firm grip. ‘Lean on me,’ she said. ‘And watch your footing. It’s still a mess out there.’

It was. The rain had stopped, but the skies remained heavy and grey as iron. The Welsh had put down boards in the thick mud, but even those slipped uneasily around, and were hardly broad enough for him and Morgan to walk together. Jess concentrated on the difficult job of placing his feet, one step at a time, and his whole body shook with effort by the time he’d reached the privy tent.

He pulled loose from her. Her bracelet was making a ringing sound now, low but continuous. A warning. She was approaching the edge of her allowed distance. ‘I can go alone,’ he said, and promptly stumbled when he tried.

She sighed and grabbed him as he lurched to one side, righted him, and shook her head. ‘Are all Londoners this stubborn?’

‘I’m the soul of reason. Comparatively.’

‘I’d feel right at home there.’ She pulled back the flap, and made a retching sound at the smell. ‘It’s as lovely as last time.’

‘I really can do this myself,’ he told her. ‘Go on.’

‘And if you fall into the privy, it’ll be my fault,’ she said. ‘At least let me help you onto the seat.’

‘No.’ He stared at her until she shrugged and dropped his arm. ‘Go on. Outside.’

She left the tent, and he immediately wondered if he really could do this alone; he felt better, but the walk had taken it out of him. Grit it up, he told himself. He could hear his father’s voice echoing in it. Do for yourself, don’t let anybody do it for you. Only way to stay strong.

So he managed. Somehow. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience, or the most painless, but just controlling his own body, after feeling mortally helpless, was good for his soul. He made it to the flap of the tent, and expected to find Morgan waiting outside.

She wasn’t there.

The camp was a busy place, with uniformed Welsh soldiers criss-crossing between tents and armoured carriers grinding past through the mud, but she couldn’t have blended in that well. Morgan was wearing Library-gold shirt and pants, and thick black boots. She’d stand out against the Welsh colours.

Not my responsibility to watch out for her, he told himself. And besides, she has on a tracker. If she makes another run for it, they’ll find her without my help.

Convincing arguments, but he sighed and limped off in search of her anyway.

She hadn’t gone far, and he spotted her as he came around the corner of the privy tent; she was standing still and looking off in the distance.

‘This is as far as I can go,’ she told him.

‘What are you doing?’

She didn’t answer. He followed her gaze, and the first thing that struck him was the sullen, smoking glow of what had been the city of Oxford. The walls were broken, tumbled ruins; tongues of flames still licked the sky. No screaming now. Just the stillness of destruction.