Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (44 page)

He froze as he saw a face he knew, one eerily familiar to him. It was a librarian named Naomi Ebele, who had not so very long ago been head of the Oxford Serapeum. She’d barely escaped with her life, along with the rest of them that day. He liked her. She was a strong, good woman, with a devout belief in what she was doing.

She’d recognize Dario and Khalila.

Just as he realized it, she
did
look up, and her eyes locked on Khalila and Dario and widened. She put down the crate she was packing and immediately walked in their direction.

Jess couldn’t guess what they would have done or could have, but it didn’t matter in the next moment, because Naomi never quite made it. There was a strange sound outside, like an impact on the roof overhead, and everyone looked up. Movement stopped.

Jess heard hissing and smelled the unmistakable reek, and as the first Scholar screamed it out, he realized what had happened.

Greek fire.

The Serapeum was burning.

T
here was no greater sin in war than to destroy a Serapeum. The Welsh would later point fingers at the Burners or claim it was a mistake; Jess knew that. The Burners would be happy to claim a victory for their side whether they actually did the job or not. But St. Paul’s was burning. He saw the first licks of fire clawing at the ceiling above the Scholars’ heads.

“Save the books!” Naomi Ebele shouted, and began slapping Translation tags on the boxes. She touched one and activated it, and the script buried inside it—like the scripts inside the lion, Jess realized now—drained a little energy from her to activate itself and dissolve the crate of the books, to reform in the Archives in Alexandria. Safe.

Khalila looked at Dario, face gone far too pale, and reached for one of the tags that Naomi held out. Around the room, Scholars were dumping books into crates, attaching Translation tags, and hurrying them to safety.

Dario took a handful of tags from the table and began attaching them to boxes. Khalila put one on the box that they’d already filled.

“The devil is she doing?” Brightwell asked, and started to move for a better angle. Wolfe’s hand held him back.

“She’s doing her work,” he said. “Not yours. Leave her alone.”

Dario attached tags and sent five before he staggered with the familiar weakness Jess remembered so well. Khalila managed four before she had to stop. It was enough. There were only a few boxes left now, and other Scholars were sending the last.

Dario palmed two extra discs and slipped them into a pocket, a move so practiced and sleek that Jess only noticed it because of his angle. Then he grabbed Khalila’s arm and pulled her toward the door.

Naomi got in the way. The librarian was a tall, strong woman, beautiful, and she didn’t seem cowed by the fire now undulating across the ceiling above them. The other Scholars were using leftover Translation tags to send themselves home to the Archives. It was a last-resort escape, and some looked desperately reluctant, but, one by one, they dissolved in swirls and screams and blood.

No tags left.

Naomi didn’t move. She stared at Khalila and Dario, and they stared back.

“Kill her,” Brightwell said to one of his men, and, quick as lightning, Santi had his forearm across the man’s throat and the muzzle of his weapon pressed to the side of his head.

“No,” he said. “You don’t.” The man muttered an agreement, and Santi let him go, then turned the gun on Brightwell when Jess’s father tried to approach. “You brought us here to get through the Translation Chamber. That can still happen, but we need to go. Now.”

Wolfe stepped into the doorway, and said, “Naomi.” Ebele turned and saw him, and for a moment Jess saw her smile in relief . . . and then the smile faded when she realized he wasn’t alone. It wasn’t just Brightwell’s people now; the Burners had crowded in behind them, stinking
of chemicals and smoke. The hard-eyed woman who led them had a triumphant grin on her face.

“Naomi, please come with us,” Khalila said. “You can’t stay here, and all the tags are gone.
Please
.” She held out her hand to Naomi, who looked at her with real distaste and took a step away.

“In all my days,” she said, “I never thought I would see Scholars standing with Burners.
Ever.
I would rather burn myself here than go with you.”

Dario sighed and reached in his pocket. He handed her a Translation tag. “Don’t do that,” he said, and coughed; the smoke was flooding in now, black and greasy. “Save yourself, Naomi.”

“Come with me!”

“We can’t,” Khalila said. “Go.” She looked around at the reading room, the empty tables, the Blanks still sitting on shelves and burning like torches. “I’m sorry.”

This time when Dario grabbed her and moved her on, she went willingly. Naomi met Wolfe’s eyes as she pressed the Translation tag, and said, “May God forgive you, Scholar.” Then she was gone, in a spray of blood and bone.

Safe, somewhere else.

Morgan had pushed past Jess, and now she put a hand on the center of Queen Elizabeth’s statue; it triggered a hiss, and the statue moved aside to reveal a short corridor. It was smoky, but the flames hadn’t reached it yet. Brightwell plunged in first, followed by Brendan, and Morgan followed, reaching back for Jess’s hand. The hall opened into a rounded room with a couch and helmet. The same as in all the other chambers he’d seen.

Smoke was already beginning to filter in and fog the air with a thick, chemical reek, and Jess coughed and began to realize that there wasn’t time to send all of them, even if his father intended to keep his word.

He’s going to kill them,
Jess realized with a jolt of real horror.
Everybody but me and Morgan. He needs Morgan.
It was plain to him, the way that his
father’s men were positioned, isolating Thomas, Glain, Wolfe, Santi, and now Khalila and Dario.

“There’s not time to send all of you!” Morgan shouted. The Burners had crowded in behind them and were pushing forward now.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said the woman who led the Burners, and she nodded to her men and women. “There won’t be as many as you think.”

At her signal, her people quickly, efficiently, and brutally swung into motion . . . and caught the Brightwell bullies by surprise. Ten men were quickly taken down with blows from behind. Fast deaths, so fast Jess hardly even comprehended them. Now it was just the eight Burners who’d survived—plus Brightwell, Brendan, Jess, and his friends.

“Kate, you backstabbing piece of—”

“Manners, Master Brightwell. We’re all friends here,” the woman said.
Kate.
It sounded too nice a name for her. Jess heard a crash from overhead; something had collapsed. The fire would get to them soon, and the smoke was already thickening. Harder to breathe. “I’m sparing your lives. Get out.
Now
. Run. You’re resourceful. And I’m giving you your son as a bonus.”

“I have two,” Brightwell said. “I’ll be taking both.”

She put a knife to his throat. “The Library rebels belong to us,” she said. “Go or die—I don’t care which you choose.”

Jess’s father hesitated for a long moment, then turned his head and said, “Good luck, Jess.”

“Da! No!” Brendan shouted, and tried to break free. Callum Brightwell held him tight. “Jess—”

“Kill them,” Kate said, “if they don’t leave now.” One of her Burners pulled a weapon and pointed it, and Brendan finally stopped fighting. He and Jess’s father ran.

Jess tried to acknowledge that it was the smart thing to do, the Brightwell thing, but all he could think was,
You left us. You left me.

And it hurt.

Kate sat on the couch, put the helmet on her head, and looked at Morgan. “Take us to the Philadelphia Serapeum,” she said. “We are going to the City of Freedom.”

Philadelphia. The stronghold of the Burners.

Jess looked at Wolfe, at Santi. “We can’t do this,” he said. “We can’t.”

Wolfe said, “I don’t think they’ve left us any choice.”

They were going to America.

Continued in Volume 3 of

The Great Library

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