“Oh, get off me, Mountain,” Jess groused, but he wasn’t angry. He was, in fact, feeling better. “Let’s find a bucket and wash.”
“And eat.”
“If you want to call it that.”
Once they’d washed and taken a meager meal, Jess slipped into Morgan’s cell. She was sitting cross-legged on her mattress, and it pleased something deep inside to see that she, too, had chosen a book from Dr. Askuwheteau’s vast collection. Hers was a biography. She smiled when she saw him, and closed her book.
“Here.” He pulled out a blue feather he’d plucked from the grass outside. It was a rare piece of beauty in the dull rust and brown of Philadelphia—bent, but unbroken. The moment he’d spotted it on the walk back, he’d known it was meant for her. “I saw Wolfe using one as a bookmark. It seems appropriate.”
The way her tired face lit up in joy felt like standing in sunshine, dazzling and warming. “Thank you.” He hated to see the smile go thinner, more tentative. She moved over, he slid in place beside her, and she lifted the book to show it to him. “Askuwheteau said he gave you a book, too.”
“Fiction,” Jess said. He watched her twirl the small blue feather idly and brush it against her cheek. He imagined the softness of her skin under his fingers and quickly looked away to put a stop to that. Not the time. He had more serious things to discuss. “You didn’t tell me Beck made you an offer to stay.”
“He made all of us that offer.”
“Not like he made to you,” Jess said. “Your own home? Askuwheteau told me.”
She didn’t quite meet his eyes. She concentrated on twirling the feather in her fingers. “Are you afraid that I’ll take it?” He didn’t answer. She risked a glance at him, and he saw half circles like bruises under her eyes. Darker today than yesterday. “I won’t. Even though the idea of a real home is appealing.”
“Nothing’s safe here.”
“I know.”
“Did you find anything inside city hall? Any sign of tunnels?”
“Nothing. I’d hoped—but if there’s anything there, I couldn’t see it. Tell me how you and Thomas are doing.”
“We’re a day or two from being ready with our work. But we need that tunnel.”
“The wall is almost ready,” Morgan said. “I spent hours at it today.” She hesitated, on the verge of saying something; he saw doubt in her eyes.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It isn’t.”
“It’s just that—” She fell silent, twirling the feather in her fingers. “It’s hard, what I’m doing. Exhausting, I admit that. And today it felt . . . different. I couldn’t concentrate as well, toward the end.”
“That’s because you’re running yourself too hard,” Jess said.
“Says the pot to the kettle. But it has to be ready.”
He took her hand and held it. “Morgan. I don’t have a smuggling tunnel where I can leave a message out to my family. I can’t communicate with anyone outside these walls. There are High Garda camped out there. Even if you do get the wall weakened, even if Thomas’s mad invention works, what then? We walk into the arms of the Library?”
“You know, you’re both depressing me,” said a new voice from the door of the cell. Glain stepped in and leaned against the bars. “Sorry. Hard to have a private conversation in here, since these walls are not just paper-thin, but actual paper.” She was right. The thin pages torn from Blanks that Beck had given them to make their cells into proper rooms weren’t soundproofing. Weren’t even much of a modesty screen. “What are we weeping about now?”
“No way to contact anyone outside these walls,” Jess said. “So there’s no point in escape, if we just die out there rather than in here.”
“It’s a fair point,” Glain said. “We can pass for Scholars and soldiers.”
“The Scholar robes are ashes,” Morgan pointed out. “And I’d expect the Archivist would have our likenesses in every Codex by now.”
“What about your family?” Glain asked Jess. “Would they help?”
He shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know. Beck was going to write to my da, but he hasn’t said anything yet about a reply.”
“But your family knows we’re here.”
“Presumably, if Beck kept his word.”
Glain sank down into a comfortable, cross-legged position on the floor. “Then you just need a way to talk to them secretly, right?”
He gave her an exasperated look. “That’s what I was saying.”
“Thick,” she said, and shook her head. “What exactly do you think is pasted up behind me?”
She tapped the papers fixed to the bars of Morgan’s cell. Jess glanced at them, then her, and lifted his shoulders. “Paper?”
Glain plucked a sheet free. Then another. Then another. She gathered up a handful and gave them to Morgan. “Now what do you have?”
Morgan’s turn to shrug this time. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Glain.”
“How exactly does a Codex work?”
It was a ridiculous question on the face of it, but Jess and Morgan put it together at the same jolting moment. Jess looked at her. Morgan stared back. “A script written by an Obscurist,” Jess said.
“In the binding!” Morgan finished. “My God, why didn’t I think of it?”
“Because you’re tired, and I’m smarter than you think,” Glain said. “We can stitch together the pages; I’ll sacrifice my extra shirt for the thread, if Thomas can forge us a decently thick needle. For the binding . . .”
“Glain,” Jess said.
She ignored him, focused entirely on Morgan. “For the binding, we can use the tops of my boots. Good leather. I remember the Turks once destroyed a library for the leather covers to make marching shoes for their troops. Seems fitting to do the opposite.”
“Glain!” Jess nearly shouted it, and both of them looked at him with identical expressions of surprise and annoyance. “No.”
“Why not? It’s perfect.” Glain swung her look to Morgan, who nodded. Of course she would, Jess thought. He felt sick.
“I can write a touchstone script to narrow the communication, one to one. The Library won’t be able to see it.”
“And we can send a message to your brother,” Glain said to Jess. Her eyebrows rose. “Problem solved, and why are you looking at me like I killed your sainted grandmother?”
He fought not to throw Glain out of the cell and slam the door behind her. “Morgan’s done too much already.”
“Jess.” Morgan put her hand on his. “No one else can do this. Stop. Stop trying to protect me.”
“Fine, then we’ll do it in the morning,” Glain said. She pulled out a set of faded, much-bent playing cards. “That gives you the entire night to rest up. Jess? Care for a game?”
“A game?” Jess repeated. He’d gone from stunned to furious—with Morgan, for volunteering again to overextend herself, with Glain, who didn’t seem to understand the point at all. “No. I don’t.” He cast a look at Morgan that begged for her to change her mind, to understand that she was destroying herself, but she held his gaze without flinching. All he could see were the dark circles beneath her eyes. The slight tremble in her hands.
He was right; she’d lost weight these past few days. If you burn, you’ll burn fast. Askuwheteau’s words to her. Was she already on fire, somewhere deep inside? How long before she failed, or something worse happened?
“Jess, please,” Morgan said to him. “Please stay.”
I’m not going to watch you burn, he thought, and went to his cell. He wrapped himself in blankets on his cot as the others sat down to play. All of them. Even Thomas.
He’d never felt exiled from their circle of friendship before, but it made him remember that if they succeeded, if his brother came through, if their plans worked, if they escaped from Philadelphia . . . then there was far worse to come. And he, Dario, and Morgan would have to lie to everyone to get it done.