Ink and Bone

Wolfe didn’t answer for a moment, and then he said, ‘It was either careless or immensely stupid. My plan was to allow young Danton to proceed and track his contacts. It would have given us a wealth of information. But I may have been overruled.’

‘That’s all you have to say? Someone in the Library had him killed, and you may have been overruled?’

‘If you’re wise, that’s all you’ll say of it, too,’ Santi broke in. ‘Wolfe. Are you sure you should be telling him this?’

‘Yes,’ Wolfe said. ‘Because I want him to understand the danger in which he stands. Because this time a Burner agent was eliminated. The son of a book smuggler might be an equally tempting target the next time someone wants to make a point.’

‘You want me to quit and go home.’

‘I want you to feel the knife at the back of your neck, because it will always be there. And I won’t always be able to protect you.’

Jess sank back against the seat. His body felt raw and full of aches, and though they were heading for London, he no longer felt that might be safety. ‘I suppose you want me to apologise for calling you a bastard.’

‘No need,’ Santi said. ‘You should hear what his friends call him.’

‘I have friends?’ Wolfe said.

‘They don’t care to admit it in public.’

‘Did it ever occur to you that I might not care to admit to them either?’

Santi cast him an odd look, which Wolfe avoided to stare out towards the road. They were almost at the train depot, where they’d catch the carriage on to London.

Jess said, ‘You put restraints on Morgan.’

‘Yes,’ Wolfe said.

‘We’re out of the Welsh camp. When are you going to take them off?’

Wolfe braced himself against a particularly hard jolt. ‘I’m not.’

‘Then I won’t apologise for calling you a bastard. Since you well deserve it.’

‘Brightwell,’ Santi said, in a quietly warning voice, but Wolfe held up a hand to stop him.

‘He’s right, I am,’ he said. ‘In far more ways than I hope you’ll ever know, postulant. But believe me when I tell you that I am on the side of my students. Always.’

Jess didn’t.

There was no chance for Morgan to escape before they reached London.

But she tried anyway. And they caught her.

The train into London was almost a luxury, after the kidney-rattling progress of their Library transportation, and Jess found himself napping, lulled by the clacking wheels. It felt like he imagined it would feel to fly. But they arrived quickly, and falling back into harsh, hurting reality was less pleasant, especially the long underground tu

The day the Burner had incinerated himself.

That made Jess extremely uneasy, and he looked towards the spot where the smear of the Burner’s suicide had been. No sign of it now. The floor was clean, and – perhaps fittingly – a new massive bronze statue had been added of two librarians standing back to back, male and female, jointly holding up a book above their heads like a torch. The base was inscribed all around with bas-reliefs of the locations of English daughter libraries, and with a pang, Jess recognised the Bodelian Library in Oxford. Most likely gone now.

Being here made him feel disoriented, and unexpectedly sad, as if he’d visited his childhood home and found it razed to the ground.

‘Why is no one here?’ Khalila asked Wolfe. ‘Isn’t this one of the busiest stations in England?’

‘It is,’ he said. ‘But they’ve been asked to keep it clear.’

‘For us,’ Santi said. ‘In case word’s travelled. We’re still carrying valuable books with us.’

True, and Jess thought his father would have been very pleased to have seeded the King’s Cross station with thieves and roughnecks if he could have got away with a volume or two from the Library’s grasp. But of course, Wolfe would have thought of that. Hence, their exclusive passage.

Morgan was next to Jess, and the back of her hand brushed his – by accident, he thought, but then he glanced at her and realised that she was still trying to think of a way out. Yes, of course she was. She’d counted on this as being her opportunity to slip away, but there was no crowd here. No way to lose herself.

She was just as trapped here, in the middle of a vast, sprawling city, as she had been inside an army’s camp.

He took her hand and squeezed it, and she smiled a little. ‘Don’t panic,’ he said, with his lips close to her hair. It brushed like silk against his cheek. ‘There’ll be another chance. There always is.’

Wolfe led them through a vacant, echoing tu

But the tu

It finally widened into a larger area that breached off into other tu

And then they were in a different place altogether. The ornate brickwork on the left was for a booking office, with cathedral-window ticket booths. No one ma

‘Sir,’ a man dressed in an extra-sharp London Garda uniform said, and pointed the way with an arm as straight as a ruler. ‘Up there and to the right. Your train’s waiting.’

Thank God, Jess thought, because he didn’t think he could bear much more walking. His side felt as if it had been dipped in acid.

They rounded the corner, and there sat the Alexandrian Express.

It was gold. Not real gold, of course, though it had the sheen of it; some kind of paint that streaked brilliant lines from the gold-washed engine down the sides of the sleek, rounded carriages. It looked fast. Very fast. Even the engine had the shape of something predatory and quick. It was hissing ever so slightly, but if it was steam-powered, it lacked the billowing white clouds Jess was used to seeing on the more square, serviceable trains that were common throughout the world.

There were only four carriages attached to this engine. Wolfe headed for the first, but he stopped by the side and waited for them all to gather. It didn’t take long.

‘The sensors will read your bracelets,’ he said. ‘I’ll enter the code that will allow you aboard. There is a lounge, dining car, and bedroom carriages. Your names are on the doors. Each compartment has its own shower, toilet, and bed.’

‘Di

‘Served in two hours. Our journey will carry us overnight. We’ll arrive in Alexandria by noon tomorrow.’

That seemed impossibly fast, and Jess struggled to calculate the speed at which they’d have to run, but his mind was as exhausted as his body, and anyway, he’d never been especially clever at maths. He didn’t even know the route, really.

But Thomas did, and he said, in a hushed voice, ‘We will move at four hundred and eighty kilometres per hour.’

‘You’ll hardly notice, unless you look out the windows. If you do, I advise you to look to the horizon to avoid dizziness.’ Wolfe slapped a hand on a button that was hardly visible on the side of the carriage, and an equally disguised door slid open with barely a sound. ‘As you enter, pause until you hear the chime. If you do not hear a chime, hold still.’