“Oh, we’ll get to you,” the man said. He smacked a heavy wooden club in his palm and moved down to look in at Santi. “We’ll ask real loud, if you keep it up, booklover.”
“It’s funny you think that’s an insult. Whereas, I’d rather talk about the misshapen state of your face. Just how many fights did you lose? I think a much greater number than those you won. Are you sure you brought enough friends?”
The man slammed his club against the bars of Santi’s cell, which was a mistake; instead of moving back, Santi must have been ready, and he wrapped his fingers around the club and yanked the man’s whole arm inside his cell. The man yelped in pain. Jess couldn’t see much, but he heard the clatter of the club as it fell, and Santi must have retrieved it first, because he slammed it against the cell bars, which rang like a struck bell.
All three of the men on the other side flinched.
“Now we can talk,” Santi said.
It almost worked, but unfortunately, the tough in charge was smarter than Jess gave him credit for . . . and he backed off, drew a large, crudely forged gun, and pointed it not at Santi, but square at Jess. “Throw it out, Captain,” he said. “Now. We don’t need all of you; you know that.”
The man cocked the weapon as he spoke. Jess forced a smile. “It’s a bluff, Captain,” he said. He’d gone cold inside, but he wasn’t about to show it. His family had trained him first and well to fight like a cornered rat when there wasn’t anywhere to run. “He’s not going to shoot. His master would have his hide.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. We can afford to lose one or two. Especially those of you wearing Library uniforms. No worth in your hides except to toss you over the wall at our enemies.”
Jess watched the man’s finger whiten on the trigger—and then quickly pull away as the club Santi had been holding hit the floor, bounced, and rolled to bump against the man’s boot. “All right,” Santi said. “Pax.”
“Smart choice.” The tough lowered the hammer on the pistol—not Library issue, an American-produced slug-throwing device that undoubtedly would have blown a gruesomely large hole straight through Jess’s chest—and put it in a leather holster at his side. “Now, let’s start over. You. The big one. Like I said, you’re coming with us.”
Jess opened his mouth, but Thomas put a hand on his shoulder and moved him—not unkindly, but firmly—out of the way as he stepped up. He silently turned his back to the bars, which puzzled Jess until he realized it was to allow the men to reach in and snap ratcheted metal shackles around his wrists. He’d obviously been through this process before, many times, while in Library custody.
Thomas nodded to Jess, blue eyes clear and calm. “I’ll be fine,” he said, which was a rotten lie.
Jess tried to think of something to say, and as the key turned, the door opened, and Thomas stepped out, he finally did. “Thomas. In bocca al lupo.” It was the phrase that the High Garda used to wish one another luck traveling through the Translation portals, a process that was painful and terrifying and dangerous in equal measure, and it seemed right now. In the mouth of the wolf.
“Crepi il lupo,” Thomas responded as Jess’s cell was locked tight, and then he was gone, prodded down the hall and to the outer door and away. Kill the wolf.
It slammed and locked behind him.
Jess let out a deeply felt English expletive and knelt to examine the lock as he dug the picks out of their hiding place, deep in the cotton ticking of his mattress.
“Jess?” Wolfe was watching him with a frown. “Don’t.”
“I’m not leaving him on his own!”
Wolfe made a sound that managed to be completely disgusted. “You’ll be shot two steps out the door. Think. I know you’re somewhat capable. Thomas has survived far worse than they’ll ever do to him here, and he knows his business. He’s going to sell Willinger Beck the idea of the press. He’s safe enough right now. Beck doesn’t want blood.”
“Unlike me,” Santi said. “I’m not averse to spilling some.”
“Nic.”
“Jess is right. We need to keep an eye on Thomas.”
“We wait,” Wolfe said again. “I’ve waited in worse places.”
He had. Wolfe had suffered everything Thomas had in Library prisons . . . and for far longer. If anyone had things to fear, it was Christopher Wolfe, who was, at the best of times, bitterly fragile. It took some familiarity to see it; he was masterful at putting on a front. But everyone had a breaking point. Wolfe had passed his, shattered, and somehow painfully patchworked himself back together.
“We wait,” Wolfe said. It sounded firm enough, but there was a hollow sound to his voice. “Until we know more. That’s all we can do.”
The wait passed in grueling silence, but Wolfe was right. In a little over three hours, which Jess torturously calculated by the movement of the shadow of the bars on the cell floor, the men were back unlocking Jess’s cell door. “You,” the ugly one said. “Come on. You’re wanted.”
“Seen the reward posters, have you?” he said, and managed a cocky grin, mostly for Morgan’s benefit, because she was watching him with a worried frown. “Back soon,” he told her, and she nodded.
“In bocca al lupo,” she murmured, and the others repeated it, like a prayer. That nearly knocked the grin off him. Nearly.
“Crepi il lupo,” he said. “Morgan. If I don’t come back—”
“Walk,” his guard said, and planted a hand in the center of his back to shove him onward. He stumbled, twisted his knee, and fell hard with his hands grasping the bars of Morgan’s cell. “Oh, for the love of God—get up, you clumsy fool!”
Jess hadn’t had a chance to throw a signal, but that didn’t matter. Morgan’s quick fingers retrieved the lockpicks he’d been holding out stuck between two knuckles, and her touch skimmed light as breath over his skin. That almost stole his breath, and he looked up into her face.
Into a quick, broken smile.
He’d wanted her to have them, in case he didn’t come back, and she understood that without a word being said. He wanted to say a great deal more to her and was parting his lips to try when he was yanked upright again, and his head slammed hard into unyielding iron to teach him better balance. It didn’t have that effect. His knees went weak, and he nearly fell again, this time not on purpose. While he was down, they added manacles to his wrists.
“Hey, scrubber.” He looked up at the sound of Dario Santiago’s voice and saw the Spaniard staring at him through the bars of the next cell. Dario didn’t look like the pampered, arrogant dandy anymore; he looked like a pirate, with an evil gleam in those dark eyes. “Don’t embarrass us. Come back alive. Fetch Thomas while you’re at it, eh?” He transferred the look to the guard dragging on Jess’s wrists. “You, Burner, feel free to not come back at all. I see you again, friend . . .” He made a lazy little throat-cutting gesture.
“Lovely,” Wolfe said sourly from the far end of the hall. “Leave it to you to make new friends, Santiago.” He raised his voice a little. “Brightwell. He’s right. Bring yourselves back safe.”
Dear God. Wolfe is worried about us? We are in real trouble.
A hand shoved hard between his shoulder blades pushed Jess on, and the outer door gaped wide on a square of sunlight so bright it seemed like running face-first into a solid object. It dazed for a few seconds, then comforted as the guards locked up the door behind him and marched him away.
Pay attention, he told himself, and blinked his prison-adapted eyes back into focus. The building, which so far was devoted solely to their care, was a long, low, unprepossessing block set to one side of a wide public square full of grass and spreading trees that had the shimmering early colors of fall. The arena where they’d been forced to watch books burn lay on his right, and directly in front, on the other side of the park, rose a four-story building of gray stone and French blue accents, all gingerbreaded with thin windows and arches like raised eyebrows. A single tall tower rose at the back of it, topped with a statue: Benjamin Franklin, who’d been a Scholar in the Library, and then left it for the Burners later in life. Patron saint of the city, so they said. They’d destroyed the old statue of William Penn to elevate their own hero.