“I take it back, dear English!”
Jess ignored him as he bent one of the halves into a tension wrench and the other into the beginnings of a pick. Thomas leaned forward to watch him work. “Do you need help?” he asked, and Jess shook his head. “Dario is right, you know. Opening a lock isn’t escape.”
“It’s one step toward it, and Dario’s never right.”
“You know I can hear you,” Dario said. “Because you’re talking out loud.”
“Why do you think I said it?” Jess used the fulcrum of a cell bar to put a bend into the pick, then knelt at the door to try out the feel. It required adjustments, which he made patiently, bit by bit, testing the lock and learning its peculiarities.
“Khalila, are you all right?” Dario asked. His voice had shifted, gone warm and quiet. “I’m sorry for what he did to you. That was vile.”
“I’m all right,” she said. She couldn’t see Dario from her side. Walls between them. “No damage done. You all stood with me. That matters more.” Her voice was steady, but Jess could see her face. She was still shaken, and angry.
“Well,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything other than the obvious truth, “we’re all family here, aren’t we? It’s what family does.”
She took in a quick breath and let it out slowly. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose we are. And that means a great deal.”
Jess went back to work on the lock. “Mind you, if I claim you as family, that’s a huge step up for me, and probably several ones down for you,” he said. “I never said it, but . . . sorry about my father letting us down, everyone. He’s always been rubbish as a parent. I just thought he was a better businessman than to let Burners get the better of him in a deal.” And sell me out in the process, he thought, but didn’t say. It still hurt.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Morgan said. “My father tried to kill me, in case you’ve forgotten. Yours is the soul of family warmth next to him.” She sat down on the bunk in her cell and pulled her feet up to sit cross-legged. “Oh, all right, I suppose I’ll claim the lot of you as my kin, too.”
“Try not to sound so enthusiastic about it,” Glain said. “And, no offense, but I have a great father and mother and a lot of excellent brothers, so I’ll be keeping them. Still, you make all right friends—I’ll give you that.”
Khalila sighed and stretched. “Our time is going to pass very slowly if the only entertainment is listening to you all insult one another, and they won’t give us books.”
“I can recite a few books,” Thomas said. “If you’re bored already.” He began sonorously droning some desert-dry text about gear ratios he’d committed to memory while the others begged him to stop, and Jess muttered under his breath and felt the lock’s stubborn, stiff mechanism and the unnerving fragility of his picks. Come on, he begged them. Work. He could feel the tension in the pick now and slipped the wrench in place for leverage. Hairpins weren’t the ideal material for this, given the weight of the lock, and his fingertips told him the metal was bending under the strain. Needs better angles. He suppressed a groan and slipped the lockpicks free, studying the damage done, then began working carefully to put a sharper bend in the pick. Slipped them in place again, and suddenly, it felt as if the whole mechanism was laid out before him, brilliant white lines shining in his mind’s eye. A subtle shift here, pressure there . . .
With a sudden harsh click, the pick caught, held, and turned.
Thomas sat up straight, breaking off his recitation, as Jess pushed on the door. It slowly swung open.
“Mother of God,” Dario breathed, and rushed to his own cell door to wrap his hands around the bars. “Well, come on, you beautiful criminal! Let us out!”
“Changed your tune, didn’t you?” Santi said. “Jess. That’s enough.”
“Yes, sir.” It was tempting to step out into the hall, very tempting to go try his luck on the outer door’s lock, but he knew Santi was right. He grabbed the loose door and swung it closed, held it there with his boot jammed through the bars while he plied the pick again to refasten it. That was easier.
“No, no, no!” Dario hammered the heel of his hand on the bars, a racket Jess could have well done without. “You fool, what are you doing?”
“He’s biding his time, which you’ll also do, quietly,” Santi said. “We need time to recover and regain our strength. We need to win their trust, scout the city, and make a decent plan of escape. That’s going to take time, and some measure of trust from our captors. We earn none making a useless attempt now.”
Dario must have known that was true, but his frustration was sharp enough to cut the air, and he hit the bars one last time and flung himself onto his bunk. No arguments, though. Not even Dario was foolish enough to rush out without a plan.
Santi made it sound easy, Jess thought, but it wouldn’t be. None of it. And he had the unpleasant thought that after escape, if they made it out of this city, then they were still in America, far from help.
Still, having the small length of metal in his hand, and a bit of control, quieted the storm inside his head from a hurricane to a grumble of thunder. The thunder was muttering, It’s useless; the metal won’t last; the picks will break. What then?
Out of nowhere, he remembered something his father had told him when he was just a child. When all the world is a lock, boy, you don’t make a key. You become a key.
Brightwell wisdom. Sharp, unsentimental, and right now, something that settled the last of his worry. For the time being.
EPHEMERA
Text from the volume Liber de Potentia, addressing the dangers of unregulated Obscurists. For full reading only by the Curia and Archivist Magister. Certain sections available to the Medica division.
. . . the toxic effect of the overuse of Obscurist abilities. This is most clearly and dreadfully illustrated by the case of French Obscurist Gilles de Rais. While trained in the Iron Tower, he left of his own accord to return to his family lands (n.b., for this reason we recommend no further releases, even for compassionate reasons, be allowed from the Iron Tower). He then used his great talents not in the service of the Library, as he was sworn to do, but in raising up a French warrior to do battle against the English for purely partisan reasons.
De Rais used his God-granted quintessence to reckless and extravagant excess in keeping Jeanne d’Arc alive and well protected; while there is no doubt the woman was a born fighter who would have done the High Garda great credit had she been drawn to its service, his constant use of power to strengthen her armor and heal her wounds took the inevitable toll upon them both.
De Rais’s power increased, as is typical for an Obscurist allowed to hone his skills without restriction, but as Aristotle himself observed, that which comes in contact with contaminants is never again clean. His healings began well enough, but as the rot inside him took hold, his touch brought madness, fevers, and, ultimately, the downfall of his own sworn champion.
Retreating to his castle, he swore to resurrect the fallen Jeanne. Corrupted from within, and maddened with it, he enacted a resulting horror within those walls that is a thing of terrible legend. That he was eventually purged by fire by his own people can only be seen as justice.
His case is, therefore, a stark warning to those who believe that Obscurists may be left on their own to manage their power and duties unchecked. Inside the Iron Tower, Obscurists use their powers in a careful and constructed way; the very metal of the Tower itself acts to limit their ability. To this end, and with the dark example of Gilles de Rais before us, we must recommend that all Obscurists be forever confined to the Iron Tower, save for specific missions that lead them beyond its protection, and on those rare occasions, that they be carefully watched. Should any signs of danger emerge, the Obscurist must be immediately and decisively prevented from any further use of power until natural healing, if possible, might occur.
While contamination may be reversed in early stages, it nevertheless poses a grave threat not only to the Obscurist who carries it but also to all those nearby.
Power holds always the hidden edge of threat.