Ink and Bone

‘It’s good to stretch my legs,’ Thomas said. ‘Not much space for them in those small carriages. Are you all right?’

The question surprised Jess, and it broke through his black shell enough to make him throw a look at his friend. ‘No.’

‘I didn’t think you were. Everyone wants you to be. That must be worse, that they just think you should be … fine.’

Thomas wasn’t ignoring his pain, and he wasn’t poking at it, either. He was just quietly understanding it. Jess let out a slow breath and stopped to look at him. ‘She’s in a cage,’ he said. ‘I put her there.’

‘You didn’t. I know you better.’

Jess shook his head and started walking again. He wished he could walk all the way to Alexandria. Crawl. Maybe that pain would help clear his head.

‘What are you looking for out here?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Jess.’ Thomas sounded disappointed. ‘Lie to the others. Please don’t, not to me.’

‘I’m looking for her,’ he said, and it was the first time he’d even admitted it to himself. ‘Glain told me she was in one of the carriers, alone. I want to find where it is.’

‘You can’t get her out.’

‘I know that. I just need to see it.’

Thomas shook his head, but he walked along, limiting the length of his strides to match Jess’s. ‘How can you tell? She won’t be at a window.’

‘The guards,’ Jess said. ‘Most of these are empty at night. Hers will have guards around it. Not many. They won’t want to make it too obvious.’

‘They’ll be warned about you, you know. You won’t get close.’

Jess nodded. It didn’t matter. They walked on, and he studied every carriage they passed. None of them looked right.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Thomas said, ‘that I should go ahead and show you what I was working on before we left Alexandria. Would you mind? Maybe we could work on it together when we are back.’

‘I’m not much for engineering.’

‘You need to work. Using your hands helps make things clear.’

‘You don’t need to invent something else. The chess machine is brilliant. You should apply for a Library patent and sell it. I know the Library gets most of the money, but it’d make you a rich man.’

‘I’m not interested in being rich,’ Thomas said.

‘Rich lets you buy more bits of junk.’ Jess’s mind wasn’t on the conversation. Where are you, Morgan? Even if he found the lorry, even if by some strange miracle he could speak to her, what would he say? It had been said already. You said stay.

He couldn’t take it back.

‘Let me show you what I mean,’ Thomas said. He pulled out a worn personal journal and handed it to Jess. Pages and pages of intricate drawings, schematics, German writings. Thomas flipped to a diagram, very finely drawn and lettered. Complicated. Jess had no idea what he was looking at.

At least he didn’t have to worry about warning Thomas not to ever tell secrets in his personal journal. Thomas was far too focused on his machines to be writing anything about feelings.

Jess handed it back. ‘Is it another of your dancing automata? Didn’t you get enough of that in Munich, paying your uncle’s bar bills?’ That had too much of an edge, and Jess was immediately aware of it. ‘Sorry, Thomas. What is it?’

‘I had the idea long ago from watching an inkman who copied out some documents for my father. It took so long, even though that was his trade,’ Thomas said. ‘I thought, what if it could be done at the simple press of a button?’

‘A letter-writing automaton.’

‘No, no, that is a carnival trick. This is something that could change everything. You see, here, this is a matrix on which you place precut letters …’

Jess’s attention zeroed in on a carrier two down from where they were walking. They passed a large tent that smelt like di

‘No, no, nothing like that. You see, you spell out sentences and load the lines from bottom to top. You spell backward, because it will reverse. Then this reservoir here—’

Thomas was pointing at the diagram, but the words blurred into nonsense. Jess couldn’t focus on it, even though he understood the kindness Thomas was offering. He was a bad friend, but he’d been worse to Morgan, and he felt a fierce desire to … to what? Make it right? He couldn’t.

Maybe he just needed to know that he couldn’t, by seeing it with his own eyes.

Thomas was still trying to explain something about ink and blocks and paper. Jess didn’t pay much attention because he knew with a sudden visceral jolt that Morgan was in the carriage just ahead. Locked away, maybe still in iron shackles. She was right there, wondering how to escape, and damning him for every moment of her captivity.

He could feel it.

‘Well?’ Thomas asked, and nudged him. ‘Would you like to help me? When we get home?’

Home. Alexandria. Where Thomas would almost certainly be made a Scholar … and Jess was still the son of a smuggler, with a nasty rumour of Burner sympathy trailing him now. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘When we get home.’ There was nothing left in Alexandria for him. How was he supposed to stare at the Iron Tower every day and not think about what he’d done?

Thomas gri

As they approached the carrier, two of the High Garda troops, both women, rose and wandered in their direction without seeming to react directly. One of them – a small Indian woman, with her black hair knotted into a complex design at the crown of her head – gave Jess a casual nod and smile. ‘Good evening, sir. Having a nice walk? It’s good weather for it.’

‘It helps to stretch all the kinks out,’ Jess said, and smiled back as charmingly as he knew how. ‘Hard travel for you? You came up from Alexandria to get us. That must have been tiring.’

She exchanged a rueful grin with her companion, who was taller, broader, and had more of an east Asian cast to her features. ‘Tiring’s one word for it,’ she said. ‘But we go where the Library needs us. Say, I heard there was a card game coming up on the other side of the camp. You’re headed back, aren’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Jess said. ‘Just heading back to the tent. How about you, Thomas? Legs sufficiently stretched?’

‘Yes, I feel better.’ Thomas gave him a look that, Jess suddenly realised, was all too perceptive. ‘And you? Feeling better?’

‘I believe I am,’ Jess said.

‘Good,’ the little Indian woman said, and strode along beside them at a pace that even Thomas’s long legs found hard to match. She seemed to give off wild bursts of energy. ‘I am Rijuta Kha

‘The big one’s Thomas. I’m Jess. And your friend?’

Rijuta nodded at the other woman, who had a friendly sort of ma

‘Ha,’ Yeva said. It wasn’t a laugh. ‘I’ve met drunken parrots who weren’t as chatty as you.’

‘It passes the time.’

‘Someday, someone will shoot you over lost sleep. It could be me.’

Jess wasn’t fooled. They were excellent at their job, and their job was to misdirect, misinform, and at all costs, move any of Wolfe’s party who got close away from that carriage. Jess didn’t care. He’d found out what he needed, because all he had to do was note the number marked on the side. He’d be able to find her now, even among all of these identical vehicles.

He couldn’t free her from a locked carrier. He couldn’t help her get away. But he knew where she was, and that almost seemed like alchemy an Obscurist would understand: knowing where she was seemed to put them closer.