Ink and Bone

Jess was no longer impatient; Santi had succeeded in keeping his attention. ‘They didn’t listen.’

‘Oh, they listened. He was a well-respected, important Scholar by then. They listened. They took his research. And then he was gone.’

‘What?’

‘Gone. I was told that Wolfe was on assignment. Then on a mission for the Artifex. Finally I was told not to ask again. I kept asking anyway. They persuaded me to stop.’

There were scars on Santi’s chest. Jess would have thought they were battle scars, but these looked too regular. Too even.

Too calculated.

‘It was more than a year before he turned up again. Middle of the night. He looked like he’d crawled out of hell.’

A year … ‘Where had he been?’

‘He doesn’t say, and I don’t ask.’ Santi was quiet for a beat. ‘They destroyed his research, his personal journals, everything. You’ll find no citations for him on the Codex, though Chris wrote hundreds of works before the day he presented to the Archivist. They wiped everything he’d done from the Library’s memory. He’s a walking ghost. He’s been a ghost since the day they finally let him go.’

Jess’s throat had gone dry, and he heard a click when he tried to swallow. ‘But they put him in charge of a class. They sent him on an important mission. Why would they trust him with—’ He stopped himself. Santi didn’t say a word. ‘They didn’t.’

‘He was never a teacher. They wanted him to find your secrets and turn them over. But he found your secrets, and he never betrayed them. What the Artifex knows, he had to get other ways.’ Santi smiled a little. ‘Little rebellions. Wolfe was meant to die on the trip to Oxford. He’s an embarrassment and a risk. Living on borrowed time.’

‘But you’re still with him.’

‘Of course,’ Santi said, and met Jess’s eyes. ‘Some people you don’t walk away from. I know you understand that. But if you’re here about Morgan, I can’t let you drag him into it. It’s too hard for him. He was born in the Iron Tower. He understands what it means to be locked up in that place.’

‘But—’ Jess hadn’t thought he could be surprised by anything about Wolfe, but he hadn’t expected that. ‘He’s an Obscurist?’

‘Born there, but he doesn’t have the gift. He was taken from the tower to the orphanage when he was ten years old, after he was tested. Both his parents are still in the Tower. He was set free.’

Rejected and rescued, at the same time. Jess couldn’t comprehend it. So much of what Santi was telling him was so different than he’d ever expected. He thought he’d known Wolfe. They’d all thought that.

But he was none of the things that they’d assumed. Not a single one.

‘It – it doesn’t have anything to do with Morgan,’ Jess said. ‘I understand – why you wouldn’t want him to get involved. But this is about Thomas.’

‘God.’ Santi rested his head on his hand for a moment, as if Jess had given him a headache. ‘Enough. Enough. He tried not to care about you and your friends, but he had to, and once he did … I don’t want him dragged back to this. His position is dangerous.’ Santi broke off, and his eyes focused on something behind Jess.

The frustration and sadness that spread over Santi’s face told Jess what had happened, even before Wolfe’s low voice said, ‘It’s my decision, Nic. Not yours.’

Wolfe was fully dressed. He’d either not been asleep at all, or he’d slept in his clothes, though these looked too fresh and sharp for that. He slid into an empty chair at the table, and he and Santi held a silent staring contest for a moment.

Santi lost. He shook his head, stood up, and went to the small kitchen.

‘You heard?’ Jess asked.

‘I can guess most of what he told you.’ Wolfe’s gaze was fixed on Santi’s back as he went about the domestic business. ‘I gambled for the soul of the Library. And I lost. Past is past. Now, tell me why you’ve come.’

‘Chris, for the love of Amon, don’t do this,’ Santi said. ‘Class is over. Walk away.’

‘If you’re making coffee, I’d like milk,’ Wolfe said.

‘I know that. Jess?’

‘Uh – black, sir.’ He’d grown up on his father’s brew, so bitter and dark that it was like drinking midnight. ‘Thank you.’ It was absurd to be thanking him, but it just came out, somehow. Jess felt entirely off balance between Santi’s sudden hospitality, and knowledge of Wolfe that he was totally unprepared to handle.

‘Go on,’ Wolfe said to Jess. ‘Schreiber.’

‘When we were on the road, he showed me diagrams. I didn’t pay much attention at the time, I was thinking of … other things.’ Danger. Death. Morgan, who had somehow come to supersede those other considerations. ‘Thing is, he built what he showed me. He must have had it ready before we left. He was pla

‘Another automaton?’ Wolfe seemed more bored than alarmed. The warm, seductive scent of brewing coffee seeped through the small rooms, and Santi began pouring cups. Wolfe sat back as Santi set one in front of him, then Jess. Jess took the time to gulp down a burning sip.

Jess focused back on Wolfe. ‘No sir. Thomas calls it a press.’

Wolfe had his cup halfway to his mouth, but he stopped and set it back down, precisely. Carefully. Santi had gone completely still as well. Jess didn’t know why, but he knew it was bad.

‘A press,’ Wolfe repeated. ‘Explain.’

‘It makes copies of words,’ Jess said. ‘In ink. On paper. He calls it a press because it … presses ink on the page.’

There was a moment of ringing silence. Wolfe’s dark eyes bored in on him in unreadable stillness, and then he said, in a very soft voice, ‘Where is this device now?’

‘Ptolemy House,’ he said. ‘In the basement.’

‘And the plans?’

‘In Thomas’s personal journal—’

Wolfe exploded up out of the chair so fast that he was only a blur. His cup overturned, sending coffee sheeting across the dark wood. Jess didn’t have time to do more than scramble to his feet before Wolfe was halfway to the door.

Santi was suddenly barring the way out, and there was real despair in his face. ‘No,’ Santi said. ‘Christopher, don’t.’

Wolfe lowered his shoulder and slammed into him, but Santi was taller, stronger, and expected the move. He expertly flipped Wolfe aside and onto his stomach on the floor with a hollow boom of boards, and held him pi

‘Let him go!’ Jess said, and took a step forward. That earned Santi’s straight focus, and that was … chilling. He kept walking, against all the sane impulses to stop.

‘Schreiber put his plans in his journal, Nic,’ he said.

‘His personal journal never went with him to Wales,’ Santi said. ‘They couldn’t have compromised it the way they got to Brightwell’s.’

‘Wrong.’ Wolfe was laughing, but it sounded like tears. ‘So very wrong. There are ranks of automata in the Iron Tower reading every word. The Library sees everything. And the thing they search for the hardest is this. This press. Because it’s the greatest risk in the world to their power. Damn you, Nic, let me go!’

Santi finally moved, and Wolfe rolled up to his feet. Santi was still between him and the door, but Wolfe didn’t try another rush. Not yet.

‘You never told me that,’ Santi said. ‘About the journals.’

‘Would it have mattered?’

‘Might have.’

‘They started after I was arrested,’ Wolfe said. ‘Part of the new interdictions. I was afraid you’d change what you were writing. If you had, they’d have taken you. I couldn’t let that happen.’

‘Thomas says it’ll change everything,’ Jess said. ‘That’s true, isn’t it? Like your research, something that will change the Library.’

‘Thomas isn’t the first to come up with this idea. Call it printing, or a press, or an ink-plate, or movable type, it’s an idea that they’ve been systematically destroying since 1455, when Joha