Ash and Quill(25)

"My people have been living in and around this city since time began," Askuwheteau said. "These are our lands, and we were trapped when the Burners took over. They needed a doctor. I wouldn't be true to the Lenape if I did what I was told by the Library and turned my back on them, would I?"

Jess stayed silent and watched as the doctor applied another layer of salve. Wolfe studied Askuwheteau with angry intensity. Without looking up at him, Askuwheteau said, "You are a Scholar? You have a touch of gift, too."


      ///
       
         
       
        

"Not enough," Wolfe said.

The doctor's long fingers smoothed more cream over weeping, burned flesh. "Any power is enough to matter," he said. "Love and power both. Stay with him. He will need strength." He sat back, frowning, and studied the arm again. Jess had the sense he wasn't looking with regular human sight. Morgan often got that same gauzy, unfocused look. "All right. If we keep infection at bay, he may live. Will he have use of his arm?" Askuwheteau moved his shoulders in a peculiar kind of rolling shrug. "Perhaps. I will check him in the morning." He stoppered jars and bottles, slotted them back into his case, and stopped to give Morgan a nod. "Good work."

"Thank you. I'll do whatever I can for him tonight."

The doctor's eyebrows rose, then fell into a straight line as he took another long look at her. "Don't do as much as you think you can. Power is like fire," he said. "It will turn on you in an instant, if you fail to respect it. I've seen it happen. And you? If you burn, you'll burn fast."

She murmured thanks, and with that, he was off again, striding at a pace that made those in his way scramble to leave it. He might look like a patchwork scarecrow, but the doctor had a certain strange grace to him. Jess thought he wouldn't like to have to fight the man. He had no doubt that the healer could take him apart as easily as fix him.

Morgan moved to Santi's side and put her hand on his uninjured shoulder. "Scholar, if you'll allow it, I can try to speed the healing for him."

"Yes," Wolfe said. "The sooner he's back on his feet, the better we can plan our exit from this wretched place." That sounded businesslike, but there was fear and grief in the man's face-there, and gone. Wolfe transferred his focus to Jess. "Thank you." A simple thing, but Wolfe rarely was civil, much less grateful, and Jess knew by that just how terrified he'd been of losing Niccolo Santi. "Now. Fetch Schreiber. I want to hear everything."

Thomas relayed the news-Jess and Thomas, tasked with building the press; the rest, working to catalog the Black Books. Santi was in no shape now to endure any questioning, and Beck couldn't possibly think it a ruse; Indira herself had seen the damage the Greek fire had done. So that was, Jess thought, one danger avoided, even if it led Santi deep into another.

"A decent bargain," Wolfe said. "Serving as his translators and interpreters of the work gives us the chance to . . . obscure some of the more dangerously useful bits of information." 

Jess frowned at that. "Censorship," he said. "So now we're taking on the role of Archivist?"

"Would you prefer to hand Willinger Beck an arsenal of inventions even the Great Library thought too deadly?"

Put that way, Jess thought, there wasn't much he could muster in the way of an objection. But he didn't like it. He wondered if this was how it had started, all those ages ago, when some Scholar had earnestly advised an Archivist that a discovery was just too advanced, would cause too much damage. Who'd put the first of the books in the Black Archives? The records were all ashes now; they'd never know. But it worried him, how easy it was to slip down that path for reasons that seemed logical at the time.

It apparently didn't worry anyone else. Wolfe and Thomas had moved on to discussing the rest of the deal with Beck. "We'll still be guarded," Thomas said. "But not locked in. And we'll be fed, such as they have to offer. Which, I gather, isn't very much."

Wolfe nodded his satisfaction. "I'll talk to the guards, but there's not likely to be rations tonight. The city's bound to save its own first. We'll ask tomorrow." At the mention of food, Jess's stomach let out an unhappy growl, and he wondered when it was he'd last managed to eat. Seemed a long time ago, and too little to matter.

Khalila, Dario, and Glain, who'd been watching from the periphery, came back, one after the other. Khalila bent down and touched Scholar Wolfe's shoulder. "Sir? How is he?"