Willinger Beck. Elected leader of the Burners of Philadelphia—and, by extension, all Burners everywhere, since this place was the symbol of their fanatical movement. The head fanatic in a movement composed entirely of fanatics.
He studied their faces without making any comment at all. He must have enjoyed what he saw.
“Very impressive waste of resources,” Scholar Wolfe said. His tone was sour, and completely bracing to Jess. Wolfe sounds the same, no matter what. “Is this a prelude to setting us on fire next?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Beck said. “Surely our learned guests understand the power of a symbol.”
“This is barbaric,” Khalila said from Jess’s other side. “A criminal waste.”
“My dear Scholar, we handwrite our own books here. On paper we rescue by picking apart the Library’s Blanks and destroying their alchemical bindings. You speak of us as barbaric? Do you know whose symbols you wear? You will not take that tone with us.” At the end of it, his friendly voice sharpened into an edge.
Jess said, “Talk to her that way again and I’ll snap your kneecaps.” His hands were not bound. He was free to move; they all were. Which meant they could, as a group, do serious damage before they were taken down by the Burner guards stationed behind them.
In theory, anyway. He knew the guard directly behind him held a gun barrel trained on the back of his neck, precisely where it could blow a hole that would instantly end his life.
But he’d gotten Beck’s attention, and his stare. Good.
“Here now,” Beck said, back to mild and reproving. “We should be friends, after all; we share a common sense that the Great Library of Alexandria has become a destructive parasite. It’s no longer some great, untouchable icon. There’s no need for anger between us.”
“I’m not familiar with American customs,” said Captain Santi, on the other side of Wolfe. He sounded pleasant and calm. Jess sincerely doubted he was either. “Is this how you treat your friends?”
“Considering you alone put three of my men in the infirmary on your arrival, even in your weakened state? Yes,” Beck said. “Captain Santi, we really do resist the Library, just as I am told you do. So should we all. The Library grants people pitiful drops of knowledge while it hoards up oceans for itself. Surely you, too, must see the way it manipulates the world to its own gain.” He nodded at the black robe that Wolfe wore. “The common man calls you Scholars by another name: Stormcrows. That black robe isn’t a sign of your scholarship anymore, and it isn’t an object of reverence. It’s a sign of the chaos and destruction you bring down in your wake.”
“No,” Wolfe said. “It still stands for what it’s always stood for: that I will die to preserve the knowledge of this world. I may hate the Archivist, I may want him and his brand of greed and cruelty gone, but I still hold to the ideals. The robe is a symbol of that.” He paused, and his tone took on silky, dark contempt. “You, of all people, understand the power of a symbol.”
“Oh, I do,” Beck said. “Take the robe off.”
Wolfe’s chin went up, just a fraction. He was staring straight at Beck. His graying hair whipped in the hot breeze from the pyre, and still he didn’t blink as he said, simply, “No.”
“Last chance, Scholar Wolfe. If you repudiate the Library now, it will all go better for you. The Library certainly doesn’t stand by you.”
“No.”
Beck nodded to someone behind them, and Jess, from the corner of his eye, saw the flash of a knife being drawn. He tried to turn, but a hand fell hard on his shoulder, and the gun barrel pressed close enough to bruise the base of his skull.
He was already too late for any kind of rescue.
One of Beck’s guards grabbed Wolfe’s black robe by the sleeve and sliced the silk all the way to the neck—left sleeve, then right, efficient and ruthlessly precise cuts. With the flourish of a cheap street magician, the man tore the robe from Wolfe to leave him kneeling in plain, dark street clothes. He held the mangled fabric up above his head. A breeze heated by burning books caught the silk and fluttered it out like a ragged banner.
Wolfe’s expression never changed, but next to him, Niccolo Santi let out a purely murderous growl and came half up from his knees before the guard behind him slammed a heavy metal club into the back of his head. The blow crashed Santi back down. He looked dazed but still dangerous.
The man who’d taken Wolfe’s robe paraded it around, as proud as a strutting rooster, and from the stands applause and cheers swelled. It nearly covered up the muttering roar of burning books. Beck ignored that and pointed to Khalila. “Now her.” Another guard stepped up to the young woman, but before he could use his knife, Khalila held up both hands. The gesture looked like an order, not a surrender, and it stopped the guard in his tracks.
“I will stand up now,” Khalila said. “I will not resist.”
The guard looked uncertainly at Beck, who raised his eyebrows and nodded.
Jess watched her tensely from the corner of his eye as she stood in a smooth, calm motion, and from her other side, he saw Glain doing the same, openly ready to fight if Khalila gave a sign she needed help.
But Khalila lifted her hands in a graceful, unhurried way to unfasten the catch that held the black silk robe closed at her throat. She slipped the robe off her shoulders and caught it as it fluttered down, then folded it with precise movements into a neat, smooth square.
Then she took a step forward and held the folded silk out, one hand supporting it, the other on top, like a queen presenting a gift to a subject. In one calculated move, she had taken Willinger Beck’s symbol away and made it her own. Jess felt a fierce surge of savage joy at the look on Beck’s face. He’d just been bested by a girl a quarter of his age, and the taste seemed bitter.
But he wasn’t taking that without hitting back, and Jess saw that an instant before Beck grabbed the folded robe and flung it into the pyre of burning books. Petty contempt, but it struck Jess like a gut punch. He saw a shiver run through Khalila, too . . . just the barest flinch. Like Wolfe, she lifted her chin. Defiant.
“Only cowards are so afraid of a scrap of cloth,” she said, clear enough to carry to the stands. There was a shimmer in her eyes: anger, not tears. “We may not agree with the Archivist; we may want to see him gone and better Scholars take his place. But we still stand for knowledge. You stand for nothing.”
Beck looked past her and gave a bare, terse nod to a guard, and in the next instant, Khalila was seized, yanked back, and forced to her knees. She almost fell, toppling toward Jess. He instinctively put out a hand to help her, and her fingers twined with his.
That was the instant he understood what she was really about. Removing her robe hadn’t been just defiance; it was distraction. Concealed between her fingers, she held a single metal hairpin—one she’d plucked from under her hijab.
She knew that in Jess’s hands, a hairpin was as good a weapon as any.
A vast, cooling sense of relief washed through his chest, and he exchanged a swift glance with her as he slipped the pin between his own fingers. She’s right. Sooner or later, there’ll be locks to open. If we live so long.
He let go of her and hid the metal inside his shirtsleeve. He’d need to find a better hiding place for it, but that would do for now.
Beck ignored them. He was busy throwing Wolfe’s robe to the flames. Farther down the line, they had taken Thomas’s robe, and Dario’s. Four robes flung onto the pyre, one by one, while the crowd roared approval. Jess expected the silk to burn fast, but instead the robes smoked, smoldered, shriveled in, and finally turned to gray and began to powder at the edges. Hardly any drama to it at all, which must have been disappointing for Beck’s purposes. A stench of burning hair joined the meaty reek of crisping leather bindings, and for a moment, Jess had the vision again of a body burning in those flames.
One of their bodies.
“Now we may start fresh,” Beck said after the silk was nothing but a tangle of ashes. “You are no longer part of the Library. In time, you’ll come to see that we are your brothers and sisters.”
“If you want to convince us of that, let us stand up,” Santi said, and Jess could hear the ragged edge in his voice. A trickle of bright red blood ran down the sharp plane of his cheekbone from his hairline, but his eyes were clear and intensely focused on Beck. “Let us up and see how fraternal we can be.”