The tools and materials that Philadelphia had to hand were, at best, a disaster. Broken bits of metal scavenged from wreckage, scrap bricks and broken stones, leather that had been rebraided and oiled to within an inch of its very ancient life. Rope was in short supply, and what they had, they kept carefully stored in barrels.
The wood—and there was not a lot of it—consisted mostly of scraps that showed hard use. A few precious new boards that must have been cut from trees inside the town walls lay in a neat, shallow stack. Miraculous that there were any trees standing at all, Jess thought, between desperate inhabitants and Library bombardments. Beck must have been brutal in his punishments for cutting them down.
“This is not so bad,” Thomas said with forced good cheer as they looked over the disappointing lot. “I’ve done more with less. Does that forge work?”
“It does, but there’s not much fuel,” the guard who’d accompanied them said. “We can’t use wood. There’s some coal. Not much. We can bring you some Blanks to burn.”
Jess shuddered at the thought. “Any Greek fire jugs that landed and didn’t explode?” The guard frowned. “We just need a drop or two a day. Add some to a little supply of coal, you have a superheated forge that can stay hot for hours. It can burn rocks, if necessary.”
“You can keep charge of what we don’t use,” Thomas quickly said. “I understand you would not want to give us unlimited access.”
“You’re dead right. And if Master Beck approves it, you’ll keep your mouths well shut about it. Greek fire in Library hands? The people would tear you all apart.”
He was right. The Library had been a constant, faceless enemy to the Burners for more than a century. It was a minor miracle he and his friends were all still alive now, since they were the breathing, vulnerable examples of it. Given the slightest hint of betrayal, the people of Philadelphia would turn on them fast.
“We’re here to give you a great weapon against the Library,” Thomas said. “Destroying us would be killing your own chance to win.”
“I’m not listening. Master Beck can think what he likes.” The guard glared at both of them with open, naked hatred now. “But if I’d had my way, we’d have roasted the lot of you on top of the books, and thrown your skulls over the wall for your friends to mourn.”
Thomas exchanged a look with Jess. “You understand that we’re under a sentence of death, to the Library? Killing us helps the Archivist. Not your own people.”
Jess said, “He’s telling you the truth. We’re enemies of the Archivist Magister, and we’re going to find a way to bring him down.”
“You. Your little band of children.”
“You’re at most three years older. How long have you been fighting? All your life, I think.”
“I hate the Library, not the Archivist. Take him away, and you still have the same corrupt system. It will breed another just like him.”
“He’s not wrong. We have a great deal to repair to ensure another tyrant doesn’t rise,” Thomas said to Jess, and then turned back to the guard. “What is your name?”
“Diwell.” It came out reluctantly, as if giving up his name meant forming a long-term relationship he didn’t want.
“Diwell, five hundred years ago, the Great Library went down a dark path. But it still shines a light. Weaker now, but putting it out plunges us all into darkness together.”
“Don’t give me your recruiting speech.”
“All right,” Jess said. “Beck wants us to build a machine for him. How do we do that, if we can’t forge parts? We need the Greek fire, or we need a lot of fuel. His choice which he gives us.”
Diwell glared, but he nodded. “I’ll run it by Indira. What else?”
“Wax,” Thomas said. “For casting parts. It doesn’t matter if it’s already been used.”
“Candles are in short supply. Like wood and every other damned thing here.”
“We’ll make you new candles from the melt when we’re done with it. The loss won’t be so much, we promise,” Thomas said, and rubbed his hands together. “Mr. Diwell, please, take your ease. My friend and I will need to go through everything stored here. It will be a very long evening, and I promise we will do nothing more interesting than talking and writing things down.”
Thomas’s face had taken on a healthy color in the lamplight. It wasn’t, Jess thought, just that they were out of the cells and relatively free; a workshop, however poor, was his real home, and he looked forward to surveying the tools and supplies and making do with what little they were given. Thomas loved a challenge.
Thomas’s careful inventory took most of the night. Diwell tried his best to stay alert, but dozed, eventually, as Jess and Thomas created a list of all that the storehouse could offer. Some of it had nothing to do with the press at all, of course, but all of it could, in one way or another, come in handy. Once that was done, they used charcoal to sketch out plans on the stone wall of the workshop.
By the time they finished their plans, they were both as dirty handed as chimney sweeps, and when Thomas put the last touches on the sketch, they both stepped back to admire it by the flickering light of a single, smoky lamp that had the stench of many-times-fried bacon fat. “Not bad,” Jess said. “Not a patch as good as we could do with decent materials, but—”
“But this will do,” Thomas agreed. “We don’t even need to wait on more supplies. It’ll take both of us, and hard, sweaty work, but it can be done, yes?”
“Yeah,” Jess agreed. “There should be enough wood in here to make the frame, though I can’t say how long this rotten stuff will hold together under strain. Then we just need to make springs, plates, and gears. Paper could be a problem. I imagine it’s as dear as wood around here.”
“Why? They’re burning Blanks,” Thomas said. “We take some and cut the pages out.”
He was right, and it was a far better fate for the Blanks than being set on fire just to inspire Burner fanaticism. “I’ll get some from Beck,” Jess said, and surprised himself with a skull-cracking yawn. It was no longer just late; the night had advanced toward morning, and Jess realized he was well past exhausted. He cast a glance at Diwell, who was slumped in a corner near the door. Too far away to hear, and too deep asleep to care. He lowered his voice anyway, to just above a whisper. “Thomas? Are you sure this will work?”
“The press? Yes,” Thomas said. “And the Ray of Apollo? There are certain things we’ll need to complete that. Glass to make mirrors, and so forth.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we die here,” he said. “And, Jess? I won’t survive in a cage.”
In a cold flash of memory, Jess saw Thomas as he’d been not so very long ago—half-starved, bruised, shaking, with a matted head of hair and beard that made him look decades older. He looked better now, but by no means the old Thomas Schreiber. That boy had never known despair. The bleak shadow in Thomas’s eyes now said he would never again know a day without it. Thomas can’t go back in a cage. Neither can Wolfe. The elder Scholar had borne it in silence, but that silence had been heavy, and telling, and Jess had heard him cry out in nightmares before.
“How much time will we need?” Jess asked him.
“That . . . I’m not sure,” Thomas said. “The press is only a few days. But the Ray of Apollo . . . well. A full day for the mirrors, but that must be done without anyone questioning our work, so two days, and we must be careful. I will consult Khalila with the calculations of focus. A week, at least, before we can be ready, and then we must find a power source.”
“That’s my job, then.” He was overtaken by another yawn, and Thomas’s smile broadened.
“Enough for tonight,” his big friend said, and took a dampened cloth to the meticulous charcoal drawings they’d made on the walls. Jess sucked in a breath to protest, but Thomas shook his head. “I’ve got them memorized. We can’t leave them up for anyone to see.”