Saint Franklin was doing a crap job of it. The town—village, really—of Philadelphia was half in ruins. The city hall in front of Jess was the only building of any size; the rest of the place was cottages and shops that looked cobbled together, and rightly so, because the Library’s ballista bombs regularly shattered entire blocks, and with the city starved for resources by the permanent encampments around it, new building materials must have been hard to come by. So the remaining buildings were made of a dangerous hodgepodge of scrap metal, mismatched brick and stone, and patched lumber that managed to have a style all its own. I might not like them, but they’re survivors, Jess had to admit. A hundred years they’d held out, against forces that had made short work of taking over entire countries.
Philadelphia was the defiant, rebellious example the Burners held up to the world. But Jess had a strong suspicion that it was less the Burners’ valiant efforts than the Library’s own agenda that kept the place alive. The decision had been made long ago to contain them inside their walls and wait them out. The Archivist had many other considerations, and destroying this place must have been lowest on his list.
The citizens of the town were as individual as the buildings, and their clothing as patchworked, heavily used, and durable. He saw tribal people walking the streets, shoulder to shoulder with fellows of European, African, and Asian descent. Odd, how varied the makeup of the place was, and how well they all seemed to get along. Common enemies, he supposed. And for Burners, this place had to be as much a draw as Alexandria was for would-be Scholars. He’d fully expected Alexandria to be a richly varied city. Somehow, he hadn’t expected the same of the Burners.
The air smelled faintly of ashes coming from the stadium, with the whip of chill on a breeze that rattled leaves. I wonder what they do for heating, Jess thought. Winters must be brutal. Philadelphia survived on raw pride.
Raw pride and smugglers. The place had to survive on smugglers bringing in food, fuel, weapons, materials. Slipping past the High Garda would be difficult, but difficult was meat and drink to people like his clan, who’d been thumbing their noses at the Library for longer than the family tree had been kept. And the Brightwells had cousins everywhere—by kind, if not by kin. Someone who smuggled into Philadelphia would have at least a passing amount of loyalty to his family. Had to have.
The question would be who to trust, and how far. Right now, Jess didn’t trust anyone except his own friends and fellows.
“Where are we going?” he asked the guard, though he was fairly sure he already knew. “Is Thomas all right?”
That didn’t even get a look, and that made nerves prick painfully along his back. Thomas had better be in fine shape and good spirits, or someone—Willinger Beck, by preference—was going to pay for it in blood.
The walls that towered around Philadelphia looked as patchwork as its buildings, but something must be extraordinary about them; the Library had Greek fire and other terrible weapons of war, and it would take an Obscurist’s reinforcements to build something to stand firm against the constant assault. The Burners must have had at least one once, and a gifted one at that. Thomas is right, Jess thought. They’ll take Morgan because they need her. So much she could do for them. Let them try. She was brighter than he was and had run from capture for most of her life. She hadn’t allowed the Library to keep her long. The Burners wouldn’t have any better luck.
“Move it,” his guard grumbled, and shoved him between the shoulder blades. Jess kept his balance and shot the man a humorless grin.
“I can run,” he said. “If you want to make it a footrace.”
For answer, the guard put a hand on his gun.
“Understandable that you’d say no. Truthfully, you’re in no shape to run against my old, sainted grandmother.”
“Shut up, booklover.”
It was still funny to hear that as an insult.
Jess set himself to memorizing everything within view—the position of trees, buildings, streets. He’d need to get a closer look at the walls to find any hidden doors. There had to be doors known only to the smugglers and the city’s guards. Jess didn’t think they’d remain hidden for long if a decent thief—and he was a quite good one—got a chance to take a dedicated look around.
They marched him straight to city hall, the only remaining building of any elegance. It wasn’t immune to the war; he could see places where the granite had been melted and deformed, where walls had been smashed and cobbled back together. But it held a kind of rigid, gritty nobility, especially today, with a clear, breakable blue sky arching over it. The tower, impossibly enough, was still intact. A remnant of a better time.
“So what’s behind this?” Jess asked. “Come on. It isn’t like I can’t find out for myself with a look out a window.”
“Fields,” said one of them. Interesting. The people of Philadelphia grew enough, then, that they tried not to rely solely on the good graces of the smugglers. That was understandable.
It also made them more vulnerable, but Jess doubted they realized it.
Inside city hall, Jess marched into antique grandeur. This place had originally been built as a Serapeum of the Great Library, and it still had the Library’s trademark elegance stamped on it in the tall pillars, the inlaid marble floor, and the dazzling design of the place.
What it didn’t have were books. No shelves, no Codex, no statues of Scholars. The inlaid design in the center of the hall they passed had a far less intricate design than the rest of it, and he thought it had once been the Library’s seal, broken up and redesigned by local craftsmen. The symbol that they walked over now was an open volume with flames leaping up from curling, burning pages. Sickeningly appropriate.
They climbed stairs, circling around to the third level and then down a long hall warmed with dark wood trim and old portraits of American notables. A large, well-done painting near the end depicted one of the battles that had raged for the city . . . a heroic army of Burners rebelling against the Library’s troops while eerie green flames of Greek fire consumed trees and buildings around them. Chilling and thrilling at once.
He avoided looking too closely at the companion illustration of the victory, which showed books being piled on the steps of this building and set alight. It made him want to take a knife to it. Burning books for religion or politics was all the same to him: evil.
One of the guards knocked, a muffled voice said, “Enter,” and the guards eased the heavy door open at the end of the hall. One of them pushed Jess forward, as if he needed the instruction, but they didn’t follow him inside.
“Shut the door behind you; there’s a draft,” said the man who sat behind the desk: Willinger Beck, as smug and self-satisfied as ever. Jess obliged, more because he wanted to block the guards than from any desire to please this man.
He ignored Beck, because Thomas sat off to the side in a comfortably plush old chair that almost was large enough to seem proportional to his frame. Thomas looked up and met Jess’s gaze and nodded slightly. I’m all right. Jess wasn’t sure that was true, but he knew what his friend intended to convey. And truthfully, being out of the cell probably was better than whatever threats Beck had to hand in this place.
The office didn’t look particularly intimidating. It did look self-congratulatory, compared to the ruined poverty of the rest of the town.
It was filled with gleaming wood, sleek, comfortable couches and chairs, and a desk large enough to double as a dining table for eight, except that it had papers piled atop it. There were shelves in this room, and books, too . . . every one an original, not a single Blank among them. Some had the gilt and flash of rare volumes; Jess recognized a few at a glance that he’d personally read, held, or run across London for his father. The majority, though, had the shabby, handmade look of local production.
What made Jess’s stomach turn sour, though, were the books—almost a hundred of them—stacked near Thomas. He recognized those volumes, and the packs and bags that lay discarded in the corner that had held them. They were the books he and the others had rescued from Alexandria, from the Black Archives. Forbidden books, full of dangerous ideas and inventions and knowledge.