Ink and Bone

‘What? No!’

‘You can’t!’

‘Jess isn’t—’

It was a chorus of three overlapping voices, all protesting: Glain, Khalila, Dario. All on their feet, arguing with Wolfe. For him. That surprised Jess. It touched him, too.

Wolfe cut them off with a sharp, intimidating look. ‘Let me finish! I have since determined that perhaps this appointment will teach you some lessons that dismissing you from the Library would not. You still have promise. I believe you will find your way.’ He held the scroll and box out to Jess. They felt heavy on his palms. Almost warm. ‘This contains a contract for an appointment to the High Garda at the entry rank of private, for the period of one year. Should you accept, sign the document and don the copper bracelet.’

This wasn’t something that Wolfe had done on the spur of the moment. It wasn’t done because of the events of the night before; Wolfe wouldn’t have had time to draft and seal a new commission, nor to have it approved.

The lowest possible rank, in the one place he didn’t want to be. He had no talent for the High Garda, and no desire for it either. But it would keep him away from Wolfe, and keep him from begging his brother – oh, the irony – for scraps.

Jess put the scroll and box down on the table and said, ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Think hard,’ Wolfe said. ‘Your family won’t welcome you back. We both know that you’re of no use to them.’

Bastard, Jess thought. Even though he’d told Wolfe to keep him at a distance, this was a deliberate kick in the arse, and they all knew it. Glain had gone red in the face, and only her famous military discipline kept her still. Dario looked tense and angry. Khalila just seemed … shocked, as if she couldn’t imagine Wolfe saying such a thing.

‘Sir,’ she said. ‘Sir, Jess doesn’t deserve—’

‘Dismissed,’ Wolfe said, and spun towards the black box. He slammed it shut, tucked it under his arm, and strode past them, out through the Reading Room, with his black robe billowing like smoke behind him.

There were pens on the table. Four of them, engraved with the Library’s symbol. Jess could feel the others looking at him, clearly unsure what to say to him.

He sat down and broke the seal on his contract. It flared with a little crackle of light.

He picked up the pen and signed his name in steady, flowing script at the bottom. There were Obscurist symbols and a blood drop at the bottom; the contract was mirrored. It would be inscribed somewhere on the Codex, making him a member of the Library, with all the attendant pay, duties, and privileges.

What a bitter irony that was.

‘Jess,’ Khalila said. ‘Jess—’

‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘I’m glad for you, Khalila. Glad for all of you.’

He took off his temporary Library bracelet that had been issued on the trip to Oxford. His skin felt oddly naked without it.

He took the copper bracelet from the box, slipped it on, and clipped it shut. The symbol flared, and he heard a tiny shiver of sound from it as it activated.

One year of service, as a soldier.

Now all he had to do was find a way to survive.

Ptolemy House was no longer their home, and as Jess checked his Codex, he found instructions to pack his things and report to the High Garda base. He assumed the others had likewise got instructions, because when he began assembling his small amount of baggage, he could hear the noise of packing from other rooms.

It was the last moment they’d all be together, he thought. Bitter-sweet.

His personal journal was still sitting where he’d left it, on the table beside his bed. He stared at the worn cover, the well-thumbed pages, and for the first time in his life, he wished he had a flask of Greek Fire. He wanted to burn the thing into ashes and a dark stain on the floor.

Nothing he’d poured into it was private. Nothing ever had been, from his earliest clumsy scribbles to the last words he’d written. I have to keep writing in it, he thought. Wolfe would tell him it was important to keep up appearances. Fu

As he picked it up, a folded, loose sheet of paper slipped out of the cover. He grabbed it as it fell and unfolded it.

The note was from Thomas Schreiber.

Jess felt a heavy, sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach. He recognised Thomas’s neat, square writing – not a spare loop or line.

Jess, if you’re reading this, then the worst has happened. I know it will not happen, because you are always a pessimist and I am not, but some of your pessimism must have rubbed off because here I am leaving this for you. (Also, forgive me for opening your journal. I promise that I did not read it.) Do not blame yourself. I could see that in your face when you left, that somehow you thought this was all your fault, but this time it was mine, only mine.

In any case, I have left you something behind the Old Witch. Three seven three. Keep it safe. And destroy this, of course, but you would have already thought of that, because you are clever.

He could hear Thomas’s voice, somehow, in the tone of the message, and for the first time, he felt tears sting at his eyes. Tears of anger at Thomas for being so stupid as to put his diagrams down in his journal for the Library to see. Tears of pain for what was gone.

He read it twice more, then ripped it methodically up into thin strips, put the strips into a copper bowl on the desk, and set them on fire with a match. Once the message was ashes, he crushed the ashes and threw them down the toilet.

Then he stepped out into the hallway. No one there, though he heard low voices from farther down – Khalila and Dario, it seemed. He took the stairs quickly and quietly up to the dusty second floor, with all its closed and locked doors.

And its rows of dusty paintings.

He tapped the glow up just enough to make out the age-dimmed features of the portraits, and the third one on the right was the one he remembered Thomas pointing out. She did look like an old witch, this long-dead Scholar; wild, white hair, forbidding bone structure, a thin and unpleasant sort of mouth. One of the Magnuses, possibly Medica. He lifted her portrait from the wall and set it aside and counted bricks. Three across, seven down, three across. He presumed that was the code, moving left to right, and when his fingers touched the last brick he felt it shift slightly under his fingers. Getting it out required the help of the knife at his belt, but it finally slid free with a soft grating sound.

Behind it, rolled tight, was a scroll. Parchment, by the feel of it. Jess pulled it free and unrolled it.

Diagrams. Plans of the press. Thomas hadn’t been as i

Jess let the document snap shut, jammed the paper inside his jacket, and replaced the brick. Then the portrait.

He was halfway down the stairs when Dario passed by on the first floor, and gave him an odd look. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Checking my old room,’ he said. ‘Just in case I left anything there.’

‘Did you?’

‘Dust.’ Jess slapped some from his clothes, raising a small cloud, and Dario stepped back to avoid it. ‘Are you packed?’

‘Ready to go,’ Dario said. ‘My quarters will be at the Lighthouse.’

‘And Khalila?’

‘The same, thankfully.’

Jess met his gaze squarely. ‘She’s too good for you, you know.’

‘I’m well aware of it.’ Dario’s smile was rueful, and a little sad. ‘Maybe Wolfe’s right. Maybe I’ll learn to be better and deserve her someday. I’m sorry about—’

Jess cut him off with a shrug. ‘It’s still an appointment. And he’s right. I can’t go home.’

Dario held out his hand, and Jess took it. The handshake was a little too firm. ‘I will see you again,’ Dario said. ‘You can’t get rid of me that easily, English. You owe me another game or two of Go.’