“In time,” Beck said. “In due time, Captain.”
Jess swallowed and tasted ashes. Fraternal. He didn’t want to believe that he and his friends—for whom this had started as personal loyalty, personal risk, and nothing they’d deliberately planned—had anything in common with Burners. He loathed them, even though they wanted books to be free and owned by anyone who wanted them. He’d grown up a book smuggler, so by definition he believed in that same ideal.
But he didn’t believe in indiscriminate murder, either, and the Burners had been known to incinerate the guilty and the innocent alike, just to make their point.
The Great Library, for all its shining history and high ideals, had just as rotten a heart; it might even be worse. The Archivist Magister might love books just as he did, but that evil old man loved power far more. He and the Curia were part of a system that had turned toxic hundreds of years ago, when a long-dead Archivist had chosen to destroy an invention, and a Scholar, to keep his firm hold on power. Every Archivist since had chosen the same dark road. Maybe now they couldn’t see any other way.
But there had to be a way. The Library was too precious to let it fall without trying to save what was good at its heart. And if it was just the eight of them who’d fight to save it . . . then that was a start.
Saving anything didn’t seem very likely. He was on his knees in a ruined arena in a Burner-held city, with nothing but a hairpin. Still, to a criminal like him? A hairpin was enough.
“I’ll ask you now,” Beck said, raising his voice to be heard in the stands. The echoes came back cold. “Will you swear to join our city? To work for the ruin of the Great Library that keeps its foot on our necks, and the necks of every man, woman, and child on this earth? To do what must be done to prove our cause?”
He was walking down the line. He stopped in front of Dario Santiago.
Jess forgot to take in the next breath, because if there was a weak link in their chain, Beck had put his finger directly on it. Dario would do what was good for Dario. Without fail. None of them expected anything else at this point.
Dario looked tired. He’d suffered some burns—so had Jess—in London, and his normal cocky grace was gone. He looked beaten.
So it came as a shock when he got to his feet to face Beck and said, very clearly, in as strong a voice as Jess could remember from him, “Really? Do I look like a witless Burner? Don’t insult me with the question.” He followed it up with something in Spanish so fast Jess missed the meaning, but from scattered laughter in the stands, it must have been cutting.
Beck’s expression didn’t change. He took a step onward. Morgan Hault was next, and just like Dario, she stood up. Not especially tall, not especially strong. Her hair blew wild around her face, and if she was frightened, she didn’t show it as she said, “No.” A clear, firm, unshakeable denial.
They held Thomas down on his knees, probably worrying that he’d do real damage if they let him get up. He gave his answer with a sweet, broad smile. “Of course not.” He almost seemed amused.
Glain definitely wasn’t, and since she was held down as well, she contented herself with a rude gesture and a long string of Welsh syllables. Jess knew the gist of it well enough: screw off. Very Glain.
Khalila got up, too. Like Thomas, she was smiling. “I absolutely will not agree,” she said. “Foolish of you to even ask.”
Jess stayed down. No choice, really, since the guard behind him whispered, “Stand up and I’ll splatter you all over the ground.” But Beck barely paused to hear his clipped no before moving on to Wolfe.
Wolfe had been still and calm the whole time, but it was a brittle kind of stillness. His answer came, sharp: “Never.”
Next to him, Santi bared his teeth in a savage grin. “So say we all.”
Beck stared at them for such a long, silent moment that Jess started to sweat; that pyre was still hot, and Beck looked like a man who liked to make an example. But he finally shook his head and beckoned a woman of African descent who looked every bit as competent and dangerous as Glain. The woman moved like a trained soldier, though she wore no uniform, only a plain-spun shirt and trousers with heavy boots.
“Very well. Lock them up—”
“There’s the good Burner welcome I was waiting for,” Wolfe said sourly.
“—and see that they are well treated,” Beck continued. But he glanced at Wolfe, and behind the artifice of good humor, there was something far darker. He was the leader of a city that was fighting a war, and worse than that, he was a true believer. A fanatic who didn’t hesitate to kill, maim, and destroy in his attempts to make the world in his own image. “But search them thoroughly. I want no mistakes.”
Jess’s fingers tightened over the fragile metal pin he’d embedded in the fabric of his shirtsleeve. He’d need to find a good hiding place. Quickly.
By the time he was allowed up off his knees, he found his legs were steady, and his stomach, too. At least this horrible bit of theater had given them all time to recover from the shock of Translation and start to put their brains to use.
Philadelphia was going to be, in its own way, as dangerous a place as London, Rome, or Alexandria. It was impossible to know yet what the Burners wanted from them, or what they’d have to do to survive.
But that didn’t matter. The idea of going behind bars actually cheered him up.
After all, prisons—like locks—were made to be broken.
The guards weren’t stupid, which was too bad; they separated the party out, two by two, and shoved them into barred cells inside a long, low building made of heavy stone. Cramped ceilings and rudimentary toilets, but it was far from the worst Jess had ever seen. Didn’t even smell particularly bad. Maybe crime was low in Burnertown.
But, more important, the locks on the cells were large, crude, and old.
By a little subtle maneuvering that his friends managed without seeming to manage it, everyone sorted out nicely in ordered pairs: Wolfe and Santi, Glain and Khalila, Thomas and Jess. Dario and Morgan each managed their own private cells, which made Jess a little jealous. But only a little, because he needed to stay close to Thomas. The German had only just escaped from one prison. He might need help adjusting to yet another one.
“Search them thoroughly. You don’t have to be gentle about it,” the tall woman—Beck’s captain, Jess thought—said, and exited without waiting to see it done. She left behind three men to do the job, which did seem adequate with the cell doors shut and locked.
“Right,” said one of the men—the squad leader, Jess thought—who had a dramatic scar on one cheek: a melted look, courtesy of Greek fire. He didn’t seem particularly nice and, after considering the pickings, unlocked the cell that Glain and Khalila shared first. “You. Tall one. Step out.”
That was, of course, Glain. She likely looked to be the bigger threat, though appearances might have been deceptive, depending on the situation. Glain shrugged, stepped out, and put her hands flat on the far stone wall of the hallway. Her quick glance at Wolfe asked the silent question: Are we cooperating? Jess couldn’t see the reply from where he stood—there was a wall between his cell and the next, where Wolfe and Santi were held—but he saw her relax, so the answer must have been yes.
Glain took having a guard’s hands on her with the same indifference she gave most issues of modesty. Beyond saying, “You missed a spot. Bad form,” to the man searching her, she gave him no trouble.
“Right. Back in. You, in the veil. Come out.”
“It’s not a veil,” Khalila said as she moved into the center hallway. “It’s called a hijab. Or a scarf, if you like.”
The guard surveyed her uncertainly from head to toe. He was clearly not familiar with the traditional clothing that Khalila favored; Glain in battered trousers hadn’t bothered him, but the volume of that dress did. “Against the wall,” he said. Khalila obligingly leaned, and though she clearly didn’t like being touched, especially so freely, she said nothing as the man searched her. “All right. Turn around.”
She did, and started back to her cell. He put out a hand to stop her. “No. Scarf comes off.”