Ink and Bone

Jess sat down hard on the bed with the book in his hands, and fought to keep breathing. ‘It’s my fault.’

‘It’s not,’ Santi said. ‘Journals are supposed to be private. You’re a Catholic; they’re like confession, the law treats them the same. You couldn’t have known someone was watching.’

‘What about Morgan? If mine’s mirrored …’

‘Morgan doesn’t have one,’ Santi said. ‘I think her father taught her to never trust them. He might be a Burner, but he was right about that.’ Santi was angry too. Vibrating with it. ‘I was willing to let her slip away, as long as there was no proof we were complicit, but that ship’s sailed now. They know. It’s Wolfe’s life if she gets away. And yours.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘No choice. I have to take her. I know how you feel about Morgan, but it’s too dangerous now. I’m not letting Christopher die for her,’ Santi said, and immediately looked as if he regretted the words. He’d had too much to drink, too. He probably wouldn’t have been so direct any other time.

‘They won’t kill Wolfe. He’s a Scholar.’

Santi’s gaze locked on his, bright and suddenly all too sharp. ‘They can do anything they like. To anyone.’

Jess felt his mouth go dry. ‘They did try to kill us, didn’t they? They blew up the Express. Danton was right. They were blaming it on the Burners.’

‘Take my advice,’ Santi said. ‘Never say that out loud again. Not to me, not to your friends, not to anyone.’ He took in a deep breath. ‘I could take Morgan before she comes here, but I won’t. I’ll take her on the way out. That’s a gift, Jess. For both of you.’

And then he was gone, and Jess watched the clock hands grind very, very slowly on towards midnight.

Morgan didn’t come at midnight. Mingled with the disappointment was a sour taste of relief. He didn’t know how he could tell her that he’d cost her the only chance she had to be free. If she didn’t show, if she ran without telling him goodbye … maybe he would have done some good for her by being a distraction for Santi.

If she came, he’d have to tell her that he was the bait in the trap, and watch everything die inside her. He didn’t think he could.

She’ll understand. She deceived you on the train. And she’d been sorry for it.

He was unprepared when she pulled back the flap of his tent and let it fall behind her.

She was fully dressed in thick black trousers and a black Library uniform shirt that was too long in the sleeves. Stolen, he thought. The boots looked like her own. She had a small pack on her shoulder.

‘I don’t have long,’ she said. ‘I figured out how to slip the bracelet. I’ll leave it in the privy.’

She still thought she had a chance. You have to tell her, Jess thought. It’s going to crush her, but it’s better coming from someone she trusts.

Or, it would feel like the last, fatal stab in her back, and she’d never trust him again.

‘At least it’s a nicer privy than the Welsh camp,’ he said, just because it was the first thing he thought to blurt out. She was too far away, and it seemed to him that she was moving away, even though she was standing still. The space between them was too vast. ‘So you came to tell me goodbye.’ She nodded, and he saw a sudden wash of tears in her eyes.

‘Yes,’ she said, and wiped at her face with her sleeve. ‘I won’t tell you where I’m going. I don’t want you to have to lie to the others.’

He was already lying. He’d said she made him careless. Fu

The only thing they had was this moment. This one, last moment.

Jess crossed the space – not so big, after all – and kissed her, and she gasped her surprise into his mouth for just a heartbeat, and then he felt her responding with all the heat and desperation he craved from her. I am careless.

He pulled back far enough to whisper, ‘Stay. Just for a while.’ He kissed her lips, gentle, light touches that turned deeper. ‘Stay.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Morgan.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You won’t make it.’

‘Jess, it’s all right. I can do this. See this?’ She held up her wrist, and the golden twist of the restraint. Passed her palm over it, and a whisper of symbols floated up from it. Shimmering orange and red, twisting like sparks from a fire. She stared hard at them, and the swirl of symbols paused and held. ‘Right there. If I change that one symbol, from gold to iron, I transmute the property of this wire without setting off the alarm. I won’t break it, and the seal doesn’t change. I will just make it something else. I’ll slip it off my wrist, they’ll be chasing a ghost. And once I’m at the—’

He closed his hand over hers, and the sparks of symbols flew away, collapsing back on themselves. ‘Don’t try it. And don’t tell me any more. Please.’

‘I have to try it, you know that. I know you don’t want to keep my secret any more, but I know you wouldn’t betray it, either.’ Her voice was soft. She believed he wouldn’t hurt her. Somehow, horribly, he’d made her believe that. ‘Believe me, I’m sick of secrets. Sick of playing by the rules other people set for us, of being trapped and robbed of choices. I’m sick of it all, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he said. And he was, rotten with secrets all the way to his core. But if he let them all go, who was he? He’d never known life without them, the way someone like Thomas lived it. What would that be like, to have that single, unshakeable faith in the world, to not see all the shadows?

‘It doesn’t have to be this way. You could … you could come with me.’ She said that last in a rush, as if she was afraid to say it, and the high colour that flooded her cheeks made him feel even more like a villain. ‘You don’t have to stay here. This is good. We’re good. You’re good.’

‘I’m not,’ he said. The clean, crisp smell of her hair made him want to hold it heavy in his hands, but he somehow resisted that. ‘I’m not good. You know what I am.’

She shook her head. Hair moved over her forehead and draped across one eye, and he gently moved it back. She turned her head away. ‘I know. Jess, I want you to come with me. I didn’t want to go to the Iron Tower before, but now … I can’t let them put a slave collar around my neck and breed me like a prize mare—’

He hadn’t heard that right. ‘What?’

‘Obscurists are rare,’ she said. ‘Why do you think they want me? I’m a new bloodline to add to their stock. I won’t leave the Iron Tower. My children will never leave. Once I go inside, I have no freedom left. Not even that.’

Jess felt a massive emptiness inside, and then a sick surge of anger. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That can’t be true. It goes against everything the Library believes.’

‘The Library isn’t a person. It doesn’t have a conscience, or a heart, or a soul. It does what it has to do to survive!’

‘You sound like a Burner.’

‘Maybe they make sense. You’re smart, Jess. You’ve never hidden from hard truths. You know the Library’s not what it once was … what we were told it was, from out there.’ She wiped tears from her face angrily with the back of a hand, and he caught her damp fingers and held them. ‘Please, come with me. You know I can’t stay.’

There was nothing left of hope now. Only this moment, he thought. He put all his longing into the kisses he placed on her hands and her shoulders and her throat, until they were both breathing raggedly with desire. He’d lied. He’d betrayed her, though he’d never meant to do that. Losing her had made him desperate. It had made him a liar, instead of lying to her with words, he was telling lies now with his body. With kisses and promises. Just tell her. Tell her that you can’t save her, you can’t go with her, there’s no chance for her at all.

But he was a coward, and he couldn’t.